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1776 CENTENNIAL 1876 



FOURTH OF JULY ORATION, 



DELIVERED AT 



CHESTER, PENNA., 



BY 



ISAAC T. COATES, M.D. 

FELLOW OF THE AMERICAN GEOGIt APHICAL SOCIETY; MEMBER OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

OF PENNSYLVANIA ; MEMBER OP THE ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES OF 

PHILADELPHIA. "STI., E'^C. 



Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation, rousing herself like a 8l:rong mab 
after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks ; methinks I see her as an eagle, mewing her mighty 
youth and kindling her endazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam. — Milton on the Liberty of the Press. 

I am all that has been, that is, and that shall be, and none among mortals has hitherto lifted my 
veil. — The Enigma cut on the Pavement of the Temple of Minerva. 

The laws, the rights. 
The generous plan of power delivered down 
From age to age, by our renowned forefathers 
So dearlj' bought, the price of so much blood, 
Oh I never let it perish in our hands. — Addison's Caio. 

Could we create so close, tender, and cordial a connection between the citizens of a State as to 
induce all to consider themselves as relatives, — as fathers, brothers, and sisters, — then this whole 
State would constitute but a single family, be subjected to the most perfected regulations, and 
become the happiest republic that ever existed upon the earth. — Plato. 



PRESS OF 
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., PHILADELPHIA. 
1876. 







03 



Chester, Pa., May 25, 1876. 
Dr. Isaac T. Coatks : 

Dear Sir, — The citizens of Chester intend to celebrate, on the coming 
Fourth of July, the One Hundredth Anniversary of American Independence ; 
and they respectfully invite you to deliver the Centennial Oration. The ex- 
ercises will take place at the luwn of General E. F. Beale. 

By order of the Committee, 

B. F BAKER, Secretary. WILLIAM C. GRAY, Chairman. 



Chester, Pa., June 1, 187G. 
Gentlemen, — 

I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note of the 25th 
ultimo, bearing an invitation from the citizens of Chester to deliver the Cen- 
tennial Fourth of July Oration on their celebration of our One Hundredth 
National Anniversary, to be held here on the coming Fourth of July. While 
the time is entirely too brief for even abler hands than mine to do the great 
subject anything like adequate justice, I must yet accept the invitation, and 
thank my friends and fellow-citizens, through you, for the great, and certainly 
undeserved, honor their flattering partiality pays me. 
With great respect. 

Tour friend and obedient servant, 

ISAAC T. COATES. 

To Wm. C. Gray, Ckait-man, and B. F. Baker, Secretary. 



DEDIOATIOK 



My Dear Mother, — It seems very natural and peculiarly appropriate that 

I should dedicate to thee this Oration, which treats of my National Mother. 

AVhatever good, if any, may be found in it, whatever inspiration that came 

to me in its composition, are the natural outgrowth of thy good instruction 

to me when a boy, — those lessons of Truth and Right, of Patriotism and 

Humanity, which have clung to me as the shadow clings to the substance 

that casts it. Remembering, with a deep sense of gratitude, thy perennial 

goodness and loving kindness to me, I come now, in sturdy manhood, to 

renew my oft-repeated pledge of filial aifection ; a love as tender as it was in 

childhood, and stronger now than love for life. During my somewhat 

checkered career of life, whether facing the dangers of battle or enjoying the 

sweet security of peace, whether safe on land or tempest-tossed in mid-ocean, 

whether dwelling amid the luxuries of civilization or denizened among wild 

men in the savage wilderness, — disputing with the condor, on the snowy 

peaks of the Andes, the possession of his beetling cliffs, or threading tropical 

forests, — no day has ever passed without a part of it having been spent in 

loved remembrance of thee. 

Thy affectionate son, 

I. T. C. 

Chester, Pa., December, 1876 



OOE"TEI^TS. 



PAGE 

Early History and Progress 9-12 

National Statistics from 1790 to 1876 12-40 

Wisdom of the Fathers 41 

Self-Government ......••••• 41 

A Nation of Homes 42 

Labor 43 

Union Pacific Eailroad 44 

Education 45-48 

Intellectual Emancipation 49-50 

Young Men's Christian Association 50 

Church and State 50-54 

Our great Rebellion .......... 54-56 

The Nation's Dead 56 

Our Flag 57 

John Morton 57 

Abraham Lincoln ...'....... 58 

Public Debt * 59 

Our Future 59 

Patriotism 60-62 

Woman 63 

Our great Country .......... 63 



CMTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 



Stan:ding beneath this serene sky, shaded by tliese venerable 
trees, whose leafy tongues are eloquent with praises of the day, 
pressing tlie soil of this great Commonwealth, where Quaker 
William Fenn was the first in the history of the world to estab- 
lish the trinity of justice, humanity, and politics, breathing into 
it the spirit of brotherly love; here where liberty had its birth, 
here by the side of the noble Delaware, on whose peaceful bosom 
the first United States flag — representing a rattlesnake about to 
strike, with the significant motto, don't tread on me ! — ever 
hoisted on an American man-of-war, in defiance of England, was 
raised ; brought face to face, as I look down the corridor of time, 
with our august and majestic patriot fathers of a century ago, 
whose immortal deeds and their fruits are to be the subject of my 
theme to-day, so much do I feel my insigni^cance in comparison 
with so much historic greatness and glory that it is with a timid 
hesitation I raise my poor voice to interrupt your patriotic con- 
templations, and to break the eloquent silence of nature. But 
duty is a task-master that must be obeyed. You have bidden 
me to speak. Grant me, then, I beseech you, your indulgence 
and your sympathy. 

As fate decreed it that America should be the last and 
greatest child of the spirit of adventurous enterprise, so she de- 
creed that on the great stage of the United States of America, our 
own beloved country, should be performed the last and greatest 
act in the great drama of human progress. May the curtain of 
futurity that is to close this act fall only with the last vibration 
of the pendulum of time! 

We are gathered together to celebrate the one hundredth anni- 
versary of American Independence. We should regard this great 

9 



10 CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 

and glorious privilege with proud satisfaction. This is a day dear 
to every true American. It is the birthday of our Liberty, the 
great National Jubilee. 

On the Fourth of July, 1776, the immortal Declaration of 
American Independence was promulgated to the world. It was 
in our own great and beloved State, Pennsylvania, and in the 
city of Philadelphia, that city that is at this moment the micro- 
cosm, the epitome of the world, where the magic \y6tencf of the 
load-stone of liberty has drawn together the productions of man 
and nature from every clime beneath the sun, the greatest lionor, the 
most glorious panegyric our country could have receired. The 
whole civilized world to-day, in Philadelphia, pays homage at 
the shrine of American freedom. Emperors, kings, queens, the 
most aristocratic and imperious potentates on earth, are to-day at 
the great Exposition, striving to excel each other in doing honor 
to the young Democratic Republic of North Amenca. Ju})ilant 
as Philadelphia is to-day, she was even more so on this day a 
century ago. On that ever-memorable occasion, Philadelphia 
was one vast theatre of wild and joyous excitement. The old 
State-house bell pealed out the glad tidings, — a music to our 
fathers' ears sweeter than the breathings of a jonng lover's first 
tender and holy passion. The distant village bells took up the 
sound and re-echoed it. The deep-mouthed cannon roared the 
glad tidings until the earth trembled, and the very heavens, 
catching the inspiration, sounded, in tones of thunder, the death- 
knell to tyranny. Old men wept with joy; boys ran wild through 
the streets crying the good news ; Moraeu forgot their domestic 
duties, and mingled with the dense crowds, rejoicing in the birth 
of the new-born nation. Every vestige of royalty was torn down, 
burnt, or otherwise destroyed. New York and Boston were no 
less demonstrative than Philadelishia. Washington had the 
Declaration read to each brigade of the army. The whole 
country received the news with acclamations of the most joyous 
and enthusiastic welcome. 

The dream of some of the greatest, wisest, and best statesmen, 
whose names had adorned the historic page for more than two 
thousand years, was at last realized. A political Atlantis had at 
last been discovered in the Mide ocean of political error. The 



CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. \\ 

tree of liberty had at last found a congenial soil, where it could 
take deep root and flourish, and from this favorable circum- 
stance the oppressed of all nations can now find shelter beneath 
its ample foliage. The sufferings and hardships endured by the 
Americans in their struggle for liberty are beyond the power of 
pen to describe ; and the heroism aud bravery and indomitable 
j)erseverance aud fortitude exhibited alike by soldiers and citizens 
have scarcely a parallel in history. 

The illustrious Washington, who had led the little American 
army through a bloody war of eight years to a glorious victory, 
was now chosen President of the United States. Our country, 
though so young, at that early period possessed men who, for 
wisdom in statesmanship, were not excelled by the greatest names 
of the oldest and proudest monarchies of the old world. Wash- 
ington, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, Morris, and Jay 
were but a small fraction of those great and brilliant intellectual 
luminaries who, at that period, lit up the political sky of the 
Western hemisphere. It is to those great men and their com- 
j^eers that we are indebted for the government whose blessings we 
are permitted to enjoy and to celebrate to-day. And now began 
the voyage of the little ship of state America, with three million 
souls on board. Let us indulge the hope that her voyage may 
continue until universal education and universal liberty shall 
have driven ignorance, superstition, and tyranny from the earth. 

The eyes of the whole civilized world were now directed to- 
wards the new-born Republic. Its almost incredible achievements 
in gaining for itself an independent place among the nations of 
the earth, together with its mild and equitable laws, excited the 
wonder of all mankind, and the admiration of every lover of 
liberty throughout the world. Under the guidance of wise and 
good men, and through the industry, economy, and enterprise of 
our people, the United States prospered beyond the expectation of 
their most sanguine friends. The soldiers of the Revolution, who 
had so heroically fought for and gained their independence, laid 
aside the arts of war for the kindlier ones of peace. The pioneer 
penetrated deeply into the heart of the unpruned forest, erected the 
log cabin, cleared the ground for tillage, driving the wild beasts 
and the wilder men of the forest before him, thus paving the 



12 CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 

way for greater improvements. Cities enlarged; towns and vil- 
lages sprang up all over the land; roads were improved, and 
bridges built; the poor grew rich, and luxury succeeded to the 
cruder modes of life; the ignorant became educated, and education 
wedded to wealth gave birth to refinement. 

As time rolled on, a still wider spirit of public improvement 
followed, and canals and raih'oads were projected over vast sections 
of our country, connecting large cities and rich agricultural and 
manufacturing districts with one another and with the seaport 
towns. 

Let us trace the marvelous growth of our wonderful country step 
by step. Let us view this most august and majestic of political 
temples statistically. 

"Vastness which grows, but grows to harmonies, 
All musical in its immensities." 

1790. 

Principal and interest public debt, $79,124,464. Population 
August 1, 3,921,326, including 697,697 slaves, and exclusive of 
Indians not taxed. This was the first census of the United States, 
the schedules not containing any account of the occupations, 
wealth, or industry of the people. 

The patent law passed, and the first patent issued by the Sec- 
retary of State July 31, and two others during this year. 

March 16, the Manufacturing Society of New York City was 
incorporated. 

In April, William Almy, Smith Brown, and Samuel Slater, of 
Providence, Rhode Island, first entered into co-partnership for 
carrying on the spinning of cotton by water power. 

June 5, steamboat built by John Fitch made her first trial trip 
on the Delaware, and was the most successful experiment yet 
made in Europe or America. 

Ship Columbia, of Boston, completed first American voyage 
around the world. 

First successful water-spiiming mill for cotton in the United 
States, at Pawtucket, Rhode Island. 

Thomas Dobson, of Philadelphia, published the first half-volume 
of Encyclopaedia Britannica, to be completed in 15 volumes, for 



CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 13 

seventy dollars. The subscribers were 246, and but two or three 
engravers could be obtained. 

1791. 

February 25, first United States bank established at Philadel- 
phia. Capital, $10,000,000. 

Samples of the first yarn, and of the first cotton cloth made in 
America from the same warp, were presented to the Secretary of 
the Treasury, October 15. 

Thirty-two thousand tons of shii)ping built in the United States 
this year. 

Cotton crop of United States, 2,000,000 pounds, one-quarter 
of which was grown in Georgia, the remainder in South Carolina. 
The total export, 189,316 pounds, the average price of which was 
twenty-six cents per pound. 

First patents for threshing grain and corn issued. 

Price of iron, $80 per ton. 

1792- 

A mint established at Philadelphia. The power first used in 
coining was by four or five horses; in 1818 by a steam-engine. 

First turnpike road in United States, from Philadelphia to 
Lancaster, — sixty-two miles, — was commenced this year and 
finished in 1794, at a cost of $465,000. 

The manufacture of linseed oil was commenced at Easton, 
Massachusetts. Three thousand bushels of seed yielded as many 
gallons of oil. Its price in Philadelphia was 2s. Id., and in 
London 2s. 3c?. to 2s. Gd. 

1793. 

Public worship, day and Sunday schools established among the 
New England factory hands. Sabbath schools, it is believed, 
have done much to prepare the way for mechanics' institutions. 

United States exports, $33,026,233, over one-quarter of those 
of the year 1792: 

Eli Whitney completed his first working model of the saw gin, 
a machine for cleaning cotton. 

Comb factories in Massachusetts, with twenty-five hands, could 
turn out 6000 dozen annually. 



14 CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 

1794. 

A line of packet-boats — two in number — commenced running 
between Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, and were advertised to perform 
the voyage each once in every four weeks. Passengers wouki be 
made safe under cover, proof against rifle or musket balls, with 
convenient port-holes for firing out. Each boat was armed with 
six pieces, carrying a pound ball, and a number of good muskets 
and plenty of ammunition. 

Initial stej) towards a National navy was made by putting upon 
the stocks six frigates, — the Constitution, President, and United 
States,- each of forty-four guns, and the Chesapeake, Constella- 
tion, and Congress, of thirty-six guns each. 

Women's shoes to the number of 170,000 pair were annually 
made at Lynn, Massachusetts. 

Calico printing in Providence, Rhode Island, was done with 
wooden blocks, and the calendering by friction on a hard substance 
with flintstone, metal rollers being then unknown. 

Prices of cotton twist yarn, No. 12, 88 cents; No. 16, $1.04; 
No. 20, $1.21. Cotton yarn was spun with machinery moved by 
oxen, in Paterson, New Jersey. 

A steamboat with a stern wheel was navigated from Hartford 
to New York City. 

1795. 

The shoe business at Lynn, Massachusetts, employed 200 
master-M^orkmen and 600 apprentices, who made annually 300,000 
pairs of shoes. 

Importation of cotton for fiscal year was 4,106,793 pounds; 
exports, 6,276,300 pounds. 

1796. 

Philadelphia communication with other cities was as follows : 
With New York by four daily stages, and a line of packet-boats 
to Burlington or Bordentown, thence by stage to Amboy, and by 
packet to New York. With Baltimore by daily stage and a mail 
carriage tri-weekly, and by packet and land carriage combined 
(occu})ying two days in the route), six times in the week. 

The first authentic census of Pittsburgh gave its population as 
1395. It was incorporated as a borough in 1794. 



CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 15 

First- successful manufacture of sugar from the cane in Louis- 
iana, by M. E. Bore, who sold his crop at $12,000, then consid- 
ered a large sum. 

First paper-mill west of the AUeghenies was put in operation 
near Brownsville. 

United States exports, $67,064,097. Increase in five years, 
$48,052,056. $40,764,097.was from domestic produce and manu- 
factures. Imports, $81,436,164. 

Gaslights were made and exhibited in Philadelphia. 

John Fitch navigated a yawl by steam, with screw propeller, 
on the Collect or Fresh-Water Pond, north of the present City 
Hall in New York City. 

The manufacture of printing types established in Philadelphia, 
where was soon after introduced the hand mould, the greatest 
improvement made since the invention of the art. Six thou- 
sand types were cast by this in a day, instead of four thousand 
by the old process. 

1797. 

Philadelphia contained 31 printing offices, 4 daily gazettes, 2 
semi-weekly gazettes, — one of them in French, — besides 2 weekly 
journals, one of them in German. The catalogue of books for 
sale in the city contained 300 sets of Philadelphia editions. 

The first American vessel on Lake Erie was the schooner 
Washington, built at Erie, Pennsylvania. 

1798. 

Eli Whitney contracted to make 10,000 stand of muskets for 
the United States at $13.40. These were manufactured near New 
Haven, Connecticut. 

[His son, Eli Whitney, Jr., at the same place, — Whitneyville, 
— manufactured arms for the United States during the late war, 
and has since made them for European governments.] 

The armory at Harper's Ferry was established, and the first 
muskets — to the number of 293 — were made there in 1801. 

At the Springfield Armory 1044 muskets were made this year. 
The number made in the three previous years was 245, 838, and 
1028. 



16 CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 

The first American vessel built on Lake Ontario — the Jemima, 
of 30 tons — was launched three miles })elow Rochester. 

The town of Steubenville, on the Ohio, was laid out by James 
Ross, of Pittsburgh. 

The Navy Department established. 

Long cotton began first to be generally grown as a crop in 
South Carolina. 

The manufacture of straw plait for hats and bonnets was origi- 
nated at this time in Providence, Rhode Island. Miss Betsy 
INIetcalf, twelve years of age, succeeded in making from oat straw, 
smoothed with her scissors and split with her thumb-nail, a bon- 
net of seven braids, with bobbin inserted like open work, and 
lined with pink, in imitation of the English straw bonnets, then 
fashionable, and of high price. It was bleached by holding it in 
the vapor of burning sulphur. 

A steam saw-mill, the first recorded, was patented March 24. 

1799. 

Robert Fulton introduced into Paris the first panoramic paint- 
ing — aided by optical illusions — ever exhibited in that city. 

Exports of the United States, $78,665,622, of which $33,142,- 
522 was the growth, produce, or manufacture of the Union. 
Imports, $79,069,148. 

St. Genevieve and New Bourbon, in Upper Louisiana (now 
Missouri), j^roduced 170,000 pounds of lead, of which 36,000 
pounds were sent to New Orleans. 

The population of St. Louis was 925. 

Total tonnage of every description belonging to the Union was 
946,408 tons, 669,198 of which was engaged in the foreign trade. 

1800- 

Second census of the United States, 5,319,762, of which num- 
ber 896,849 were slaves. Total quantity of spirits distilled from 
molasses since January 1, 1790, was 23,148,404 gallons, of which 
6,322,640 gallons were exported. Quantity of sugar sent out 
from the refineries during the year was 3,349,896 pounds, and the 
duties thereon $6,6,998. Cotton production, 35,000,000 pounds, 
of which 17,800,000 pounds were exported, 16,000,000 pounds 



CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 17 

being: sent to England. 8,000,000 pounds were manufactured in 
the United States, of which only about 500 bales were consumed 
in regular establishments. 

1801. 

The first full-blooded Merino buck imported arrived in Phila- 
delphia. Quantity of cotton grown in the world, 520,000,000 
pounds, 48,000,000 pounds of which, valued at $8,000,000, were 
produced in the United States. The average price of cotton 
(American) at places of exportation was forty-four cents per 
pound ; in England, seventeen to thirty-eight pence sterling. 

Buffalo was laid out in 1798 ; there were five dwellings, one 
tavern, and one store, all of logs, on the site. 

American Company of Booksellers was formed, and the Phila- 
delphia Premium Society for premiums in im^arovements in arts 
and manufactures. 

The compound or oxyhydrogen blowpipe invented by Prof. 
Robert Hare, of Philadelphia. • 

The Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, instituted at 
New Haven, was incorporated. 

1802. 

A proposal to light Central Square in Philadelphia with gas. 

Price of Spanish Merino bucks, $300. 

In June the first Literary Fair or Trade Sale of books in the 
United States was held in New York City. July 31, two weekly 
journals were published in Ohio : the Western Spy at Cincinnati, 
and the Scioto Gazette at Chillicothe, the first inland town in the 
northwestern territory which had a press. They were printed 
on inferior paper brought from Georgetown, Kentucky, on horse- 
back, and their united circulation did not exceed six hundred 
copies. The latest news in the Spy of this date from France was 
dated May 17; from London, May 10; from New York, July 
9 ; from Washington, July 25. 

The white population of Ohio was 76,000. The State consti- 
tution was framed at Chillicothe, and it was admitted into the 
Union. 

The first press and newspaper in Mississippi was The Natchez 

2 



18 CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 

Gazette. The territorial currency at this period consisted in part 
of " Cotton Receipts." 

The first official returns of exports from Kentucky and Ten- 
nessee were, in the former, $626,673, and in the latter $443,955. 

The only manufactory of sheet-copper in the country was that 
of the Messrs. Revere at Boston, Massachusetts. 

The discovery of the Catawba grape on the Block Ridge moun- 
tain, in Buncombe County, North Carolina. 

1803. 

First elementary work on Botany in the United States by an 
American (Barton). 

Exports, $55,800,033. The value of domestic articles exported 
was $42,205,961, viz.: products of the sea, $2,635,000; of the 
forest, $4,850,000; of agriculture, $32,995,000; and of manu- 
factures, $1,350,000. Cotton of domestic and foreign growth 
exported, $7,920,000. 

Tonnage of new vessels built was 88,448 tons. 

1804. 

The village of St. Louis contained two American families, out 
of a population of less than one thousand souls. 

The Middlesex Agricultural Society in Massachusetts, the first 
county association in the United States, was incorporated. 

The tonnage of new vessels, 103,753 tons. Total tonnage of 
the United States, 1,042,404. The average tonnage of vessels 
annually built in the British Empire in the last twelve years was 
100,487 tons. The first iron foundry in Pittsburgh established. 
The first ark-load of bituminous coal was sent down the Susque- 
hanna two hundred and sixty miles, to tide water, at Columbia. 

The first broadcloth from Merino wool was made at Pittsfield, 
Massachusetts. The first quarto Bible, from movable types, ever 
set up in the United States was ^ii'Iwted in Philadelphia, by M. 
Carey, at a cost of $15,000; there was only one type-founder 
then in the United States. The type was kept standing until 
200,000 impressions were made. 



CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 19 

Number of patents issued, 83, — more than any previous year. 
The first busts ever executed in American marble. 



1805. 

Bed-tickingj coarse gingham, and sheeting woven by hand. 
Gingham sold for 70 cents and sheeting for 50 cents per yard. 

The export of cotton was 38,312,087 pounds, valued at 
$9,445,000. The value of domestic manufactures, $2,300,000. 

Total value of real and personal property of the United States, 
exclusive of Louisiana, was $2,505,500,000. The estimate in- 
cluded 1,000,000 slaves, valued at $200 each, and 10,000 flour, 
grist, saw, iron, and other mills, valued at not less than $400 
each. Population, 6,180,000, of Avhora 1,866,000 were active or 
productive persons. 

The annual consumption of British and other dry goods on an 
average of three years was $35,000,000, and of all foreign arti- 
cles $52,000,000; total, $87,000,000. The produce of the sea and 
rivers, $5,000,000; agricultural food, etc., $85,000,000; domestic 
manufactures, $30,000,000; produce of the forest, $12,000,000; 
making the total annually $219,000,000. 

Manufactured cotton in the United States, 1000 bales, double 
that of the year 1800. Price of numbers 12, 16, and 20 of cotton 
twist yarn, 99, 115, and 131 cents. 

First agency for sale of American manufactures established in 
Philadelphia. Number of iron furnaces in Pennsylvania 16, and 
the forges 37. 2000 tons of iron were made in Pennsylvania. 

[This is only claimed.] First carriage built in the United 
States at Dorchester, Massachusetts. It was an imitation of an 
English chariot, and could not compete with English and French 
carriages. 

First settlement made in Missouri. First planing machine 
recorded in the United States. 

1806. 

Total value of domestic manufactures exported was $2,707,000. 
Revenue for fiscal year, $15,000,000. 

Price of upland cotton in England, 15 to 21 J pence sterling; of 
New Orleans, 17 to 24 ; Sea Island, 30 to 37. 



20 CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 

First cargo of ice, 130 tons, shipped from Massachusetts to 
West Indies. In 1816, 6 cargoes of 12,000 tons were shipped; 
in 1856, 363 cargoes of 146,000 tons from Boston to foreign ports. 

First ark-load of anthracite coal shipped from Mauch Chunk to 
Philadelphia. 

1807. 

The steamboat Clermont made her trip from New York to 
Albany, 150 miles, in 32 hours, and by her success permanently 
introduced the era of navigation by steam. 

Exports greater than any year previous to 1 838, amounting to 
$108,343,150, an increase in sixteen years of $89,331,109. Do- 
mestic exports, $48,699,592 ; foreign, $59,643,558. Assuming the 
population to have been 6,300,000, the domestic exports were in 
the proportion of $7.73 ; the foreign, $9.46 ; and the total, $17.19 
for each individual. Total value per capita of exports in 1790 
was $4.84. 

Domestic exports embraced manufactures to the value of 
$2,309,000 ; cotton, about 66,200,000 pounds, worth 21 cents, and 
valued at $14,232,000, and flour to the value of $10,753,000. 
The value of cotton exported was nearly $6,000,000 in excess of 
the previous year. Total value of imports was $138,500,000. 
New tonnage, 99,784 tons. First mineral-water made in the 
United States at Philadelphia, and porter and ale at Pittsburgh. 

The importation of foreign shot superseded by the manufac- 
turing of it in Philadelphia, the lead found in Louisiana and 
shipped from New Orleans. 

1808. 

Total exports of the United States, $22,430,960, of which 
$9,433,546 were of domestic productions, including manufactures 
of $411,000, and cotton worth $2,221,000. 

The steamboat Phoenix was probably the first to cross tlie ocean. 

Tonnage this year built was 31,755 tons. 

Barlow's Columbiad was issued in a style making it the most 
magnificent volume which had yet appeared in the United States. 
It was in quarto and illustrated, but on account of high price the 
sale was limited. 



CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 21 

1809. 
First Geological Survey of the United States published. Sales 
were about this time made in Boston of the first cotton duck made 
in New England, if not in the world. 

1810. 

Soap and tallow candles were principally of family manufacture. 
There were several large manufactories in the large cities. 

Population of the United States, 7,239,903. This was the third 
census, and the Marshals were instructed to schedule the manufac- 
turins: establishments and the amount of their several manufac- 
tures within the districts assigned them. Though not complete, 
it returned a vast amount of interesting and valuable information, 
and may be considered the first systematic tabulated returns of 
American manufactures, etc. 

[Under the supervision of Tench Coxe, Esq., of Philadelphia.] 

A SUMMAKY 

Of ihe Total Value of the Several Branches of Manufactures in the United 
States, exclusive of Doubtful Articles, according to the Census of 1810. 

1. Goods nianuftictured by the loom, of cotton, wool, flax, hemp, 

and silk, and silk stockings $39,497,057 

2. Other goods of these five materials, spun 2,052,120 

3. Instruments and machinery manufactured, value $186,650, 

cardimr, fulling, and floor-cloth stamping by machinery, 

value $5957. ..r. 6,144,466 

4. Hats of fur, wool, etc., and of mixtures of them 4,323,744 

5. Manufactures of iron 14,364,526 

6. Manufactures of gold, silver, set work, mixed metals, etc 2,483,912 

7. Manufactures of lead 858,509 

8. iSoap, tallow candles, wax, and spermaceti, spring oil and 

whale oil '. 1,766,392 

9. Manufactures of hides and skins 17,935,477 

10. Manufactures from seeds 858,509 

11. Grain, fruit, and case liquors, distilled and fermented 16,528,207 

12. Dry manufactures from grain, exclusively from flour, meal, etc. 75,766 

13. Manufactures of wood 5,554,708 

14. Manufactures of essences and oils, of and from wood 179,150 

15. Ilefined or manufactured sugars 1,415,724 

16. Manufactures of paper, pasteboard, cards, etc 1,939,285 

17. Manufactures of marble, stone, and slate 462,115 

18. Glass manufactures 1,047,004 

19. Earthen manufactures 259,720 

20. Manufactures of tobacco 1,260,378 

21. Drugs, dyestuffs, paints, etc., and dyeing 500,382 

22. Cables and cordage 7. ,... 4,243,168 

23. Manufactures of hair 129,731 

24. Various and miscellaneous manufactures 4,347,601 

$127,694,602 



22 CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 



SUMMARY 

Of the Respective Values of Manufactures in each of the States and Territories 
of the United States in 1810, according to the Returns of the Miirshais, and 
also as Estimated by Mr. Tench Coxe, exclusive of Doubtful Articles. 

Value as Value as 

Returned. Estimated. 

Maine (District) S2,137,781 $3,741,116 

Massachusetts 17,516,423 21,895,528 

New Hampshire 3,135,027 5,225,045 

Vermont 4,325,824 5,407,280 

Khode Island 3,079,556 4,10P..074 

Connecticut 5,900,560 7,771,928 

New York 14,569,136 25,370,289 

New Jersej' 4,703,063 7,054,594 

Penjisylvania 32,089,130 33,691,111 

Delaware 990,711 1,733,744 

Maryland 6,553,597 11,468,794 

Virginia 11,447.605 15,263.473 

Ohio 1,987,370 2,894,270 

Kentucky 4,120,683 6,181,024 

North Carolina 5,323,322 6,653,152 

East Tennessee 1,156,049 "t „ n-i-i Mn 

West Tennessee 1,552,225 j<5,''Ji,"-^ 

South Carolina 2,174,157 3,623,595 

Georgia 2,743,863 3,658,481 

Orleans Territory 814,905 1,222,357 

Mississippi " 314,305 419,073 

Louisiana " 34,657 200,000 

Indiana " 196,532 300,000 

Illinois " 71,703 120,000 

Michi-nn " 37,018 50,000 

Columbia (District) 719,400 1,100,000 

$127,694,602 $172,762,676 

The number of newspapers printed in the United States annu- 
ally was upwards of 22,000,000 copies. 

Number of paper mills in the United States, 185. 

Value of exports, $66,757,944, fifteen millions in cotton, five 
in tobacco, and seven in flour. 

First cotton goods printed in the United States by engraved 
rollers and machinery driven by water power near Philadelphia. 

Philadelphia was supplied Avith water through thirty-five miles 
of wooden pipe of three- or four-inch bore, connected by cylinders 
of cast iron. 

1811. 

Value of domestic exports, $45,294,041. Importations from 
England, £1,874,917 sterling. 



CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 23 

Population of Philadelphica in 1810 was 111,210, that of New 
York City 96,372. Total value of manufactures in Pennsylvania 
was $44,194,740. 

First steamer on the Western waters was the New Orleans, 
which was built in Pittsburgh and made her first trip from that 
city October 29, and arrived at Louisville, seven hundred miles 
distant, in seventy hours. 

Number of cotton factories in Ehode Island, 37; number of 
spindles, 32,786. 

Number of patents issued from 31st July, 1790, to 31st De- 
cember, 1811, was 1613, and the gross amount of fees received 

was $49,110. 

1812. 

First artificial globes manufactured in the United States were 
made in Bradford, Vermont. 

Scarcity of pins caused them to be sold at one dollar per paper 
by the package. 

First flint glass works on a large scale established at Pitts- 
burgh. 

Two hundred and thirty-seven patents issued this year. 

A memorial for improving the Schuylkill Piver, urging as an 
inducement the coal deposits at its head-waters, drew from the 
Senator from Schuylkill County a declaration that there was no 
coal there, only a "black stone" called coal, which would not 
burn. So little was then known of this vast mineral resource 
and manufacturing agent. 

1813. 

The first stereotyping in America done this year in New York 
City, by D. & G. Bruce. This firm in 1815 stereotyped the first 
Bible in America. 

First lead pencils manufactured in the United States. 

Price of cotton, 12 cents per pound. 179 patents issued this 
year. 

1814. 
Of one of the ships of the McDonough fleet, — the Saratoga, 160 
feet long, 28 guns, and 500 tons, — the timber was all standing in 
the forest March 2, the keel was laid the 6th, and the vessel 
was launched on the 11th of April. 



24 CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 

The first passage of a steam ferry boat between New York and 
Long Island — the Nassau. 

New vessels built, 29,039 tons. 

Exports, $6,782,000 ; and of articles of foreign origin, $145,1G9. 

A cannon foundry, the beginning of the Fort Pitt Iron Works, 
was established at Pittsburgh, at which the first cannon were 
made on contract for the fleet on Lake Erie and for the defense 
of New Orleans. 

The Literary and Philosophical Society of New York estab- 
lished. 

207 patents issued for this year. 

1815. 

Cotton manufacture of the United States employed this year 
a capital of $40,000,000. Males, 10,000 ; Avomen and children, 
66,000; boys under 17 years of age, 24,000; wages of 100,000 
persons, averaging $1.50 each, $15,000,000. 

Woolen manufactures invested in buildings and machinery, 
$12,000,000; raw material consumed, $7,000,000; number of 
persons employed, 50,000. 

Tonnage of new vessels, 154,624 tons. At Cincinnati, Ohio, 
which contained 6000 inhabitants and 1100 buildings, were 4 
cotton spinning factories, most of them small, containing 1200 
spindles, moved by horse power. Two newspaper offices had an 
extra press each, for book printing, and had issued since 1811 
twelve volumes of bound books, averaging 200 pages each. The 
land, lots, and dwelling-houses in Ohio were valued at $61,347,215. 

Number of jjatents issued, 160. 

1816- 

Public debt contracted, chiefly by the war, was $123,016,375. 

Gas from coal was introduced into several cities this year. The 
first steam paper mill in the United States went into operation at 
Pittsburgh, with an engine of sixteen horse power. 

1818. 

The whole number of steamboats constructed on the Western 
waters, 30. 



CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 25 

The number of manufacturing companies in the State of New 
York, up to June of this year, was 129, with a capital of 
$7,742,500. The American Journal of Arts and Sciences, issued 
in quarterly numbers, established. It was the first journal in 
the United States which embraced in its plan the entire circle of 
the physical sciences, and their application to the arts. 

First cotton mill in North Carolina. Illinois admitted into the 

Union. 

1819. 

The Analectic Magazine for July contained the first published 
specimens of American lithographic printing. 

1820. 

May 3, the first permanent Committee of Agriculture was ap- 
pointed by Congress to have charge of that branch of industry. 

The total value of the book publishing business of the United 
States was estimated at $2,500,000, viz. : of school books, 
$750,000; classical, $250,000; theological, $150,000; law, 
$200,000; medical, $150,000; all others, $1,000,000. 

The relative proportion of British and American books was, of 
American, 30, of British, 70 per cent. During the next thirty 
years the proportions were reversed. 

The manufacture of starch from potatoes, patented in 1802, was 
established in New Hampshire. 

A manufactory of vestings, worsted, and silk cloths, established 
in Providence, Rhode Island, the only qiie in the United States. 

Population of United States, according to fourth census, was 
9,638,131 ; having increased 83.13 per cent, in ten years. The 
active population was distributed as follows : engaged in agricul- 
ture, 2,075,363; in manufactures, 349,663; in commerce, includ- 
ing country shop-keepers, 72,558. 



26 CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATIONT. 

1820. 
STATEMENT 

Of the Raw Cotton consumed, and of the Number of Spindles em-ployed in each 
State, according to the Fourth Census : 

Pounds of Cotton Number of 

States. Annually Spun. Spindles. 

Maine 56,500 3.070 

New Hampshire 41-2,100 13,012 

Massachusetts 1,611,796 30,304 

Khode Island 1,914, ■220 63,372 

Connecticut 897,335 29,826 

Vermont 117,250 3,278 

New York 1,412,495 33,160 

New Jersey 648,600 18,124 

Pennsvlvaiiiu 1,062,753 13,776 

Delaware 423,800 11,784 

Maryland 849,000 20,245 

Virjrinia 3,000 

NorU Carolina 18,000 288 

South Carolina 46,449 588 

Kentucky 360,951 8,097 

Ohio .■ 81,360 1,680 

9,945,669 250,572 

1822. 

Cotton crop, 210,000,000 pounds. Quantity exported, 
144,700,000 pounds. Cotton culture first commenced in Texas. 
Steam power first introduced in the sugar manufacture of Lou- 
isiana, increasing the same from 30,000 to 70,000 hogsheads 
annually. 

The first successful use of iron conduit pipes in the United 
States made in the service of the Fairmount Water Works, Phila- 
delphia. 

The boldest enterprise of publishing in tlie United States was 
the completion at Philadelphia of an American edition of Rees's 
Cyclopaedia, revised, corrected, enlarged, and adapted to this 
country. It was in forty-one quarto volumes, with plates and 
engravings. 

1823. 

A stern-wheel steamboat, the Virginia, first ascended the Mis- 
sissippi as far as Fort Snelling. 

Rates of passage by steamboat on Western rivers were as fol- 
lows: From New Orleans to Cincinnati, 1480 miles, 16 days, 
$50 ; down passage, in 8 days, $25. Louisville to Cincinnati, 
130 miles, 30 hours, $6; downward, 15 hours, $4. Cincinnati 



CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 27 

to Pittsburgh, 449 miles, 5 days, $15 ; downward, 60 hours, 
$12. , 

The first Railway Act in America passed 31st of March by 
Pennsylvania, to erect a road from Philadelphia to Columbia, 
Lancaster County, the stock of which was limited to 6000 shares 
of $100 each. 

The first steam printing press in the United States, from which 
the first book printed was an abridgement of Murray's English 
Grammar. This was in New York City. The first power-press 
is said to have been used the ensuing year at Albany, New York. 

1824. 

The Franklin Institute of Pennsylvania incorporated.' 

The amount of manufacturing capital in New Hampshire, 
$5,830,000 ; in Massachusetts, $6,840,000 ; in Connecticut, 
$1,300,000 ; and in New York, $797,000 ; which added to 
the amount in seven States, made a total of $70,656,500. 

Nine daily newspaper offices in New York City issued 85,600 
newspapers every week, exclusive of 8 or 10 weeklies, — circula- 
tion unknown. Whole number of newspapers published in the 
United States, 110; of which 18 were in Philadelphia, 11 of them 
being dailies. 

The city of Philadelphia contained 55 printing-offices with 112 
presses, supporting 150 workmen. 

1825. 

Number of spindles in cotton factories in United States, 800,000. 
Consumption of raw cotton, 100,000 bales, 

Pittsburgh contained 7 steam rolling-mills. The manufactures 
of Pittsburgh estimated to be $2,500,000. 

The licensed tonnage of all the lakes consisted of three steam- 
ers of 772 tons, and 54 sailing craft of 1677 tons. 

First successful attempt to generate steam by anthracite coal 
was made this year in Philadelphia. 

1826. 
Four million one hundred and thirteen thousand bushels of 
salt made in the United States. Number of cotton-mills in New 
England, 400 ; in other States, 275. 



28 CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 

The printing-offices issued, in addition to about 175,000 news- 
papers, nearly 200,000 pamphlets, almanacs, school and other 
books, etc. 

An electric telegraph erected on Long Island, New York, by 
H. G. Dyer, who used frictional electricity, and dyed marks on 
chemically-prepared paper by means of electric sparks. 

Patent leather first made in United States, at Newark, New 
Jersey. 

First palm-leaf hats in United States made in Massachusetts. 

Total capital employed in manufactures was $156,500,000, of 
which $30,000,000 ivas in Pennsylvania, $28,000,000 in New 
York, and $26,000,000 in Massachusetts. This included every 
species of manufactures except food, the capital of which was 
$200,000,000. 

1827. 

General use of anthracite coal in furnaces and grates. 
The Boston Mechanics' Institute incorporated. 
The first lithographic establishment in the United States estab- 
lished in Boston, with imported artists and materials from England. 

1828. 

The number of newspapers in Boston, 34, including 7 dailies 
and 1 weekly. 

Number of printing-offices in United States, 900 ; increase of 
525 since 1810. 

The newspapers of the United States consumed 104,400 reams 
of paper yearly, worth $500,000 ; and those of New York, 1 5,000 
reams, worth $5 per ream. 

Amount of fees received by Patent Office, since its organization 
to December 31, was $160,659.37. 

1829. 

The town of Lynn, Massachusetts, had a population of 5000, 
and produced 12,000,000 to 14,000,000 pairs of shoes, at an 
average of 75 cents each, or $10,000,000. 

Paper manufactures of the United States, $6,000,000. Straw 
paper began to be extensively used about this time. It was used 
in printing Niles^ Register, and cost less than $2 per ream. 



CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 29 

Pittsburgh contained 8 rolling-mills, employing 300 hands. 

The American Institute of New York was incorporated. 

Twenty-five thousand piano-fortes, valued at $750,000, made 
in United States. 900 made in Philadelphia, 800 in New York, 
717 in Boston, and a considerable number in Baltimore. 

First attempt to make sewing-silk in United States made at 
Mansfield, Massachusetts. Handsome silk ribbons made in Bal- 
timore, Maryland. 

Two watch-crystal manufactories in the United States ; one at 
Boston, the other at Pittsburgh. 

Tin was discovered by Prof. Hitchcock, of Amherst College, 
Massachusetts, in Goshen, Connecticut, being the first in the 
United States. 

Specimens of gold, weighing 10 pounds, 4 pounds, and others 
of less weight, discovered in Anson County, North Carolina. The 
first gold received at the Mint from Virginia was deposited this 
year, to the value of $2500 ; the first from South Carolina, to the 
value of $3500 ; and the first from Georgia was sent the next 
year, to the value of $212,000. 

1830. 

Thirteen hundred and forty-three miles of canals and other 
artificial navigation; 1828 miles in progress, and 408 projected. 
Of railroads, 44 miles were completed, 422 in progress, and 697 
projected. 

The first locomotive constructed in the United States is said to 
have been built at the "West Point Foundry, New York, called the 
Phoenix. 

Whole number of iron furnaces in United States, 202. Total 
amount of iron made in United States, $13,329,700. Cotton 
goods manufactured in the United States, $25,000,000. Value 
of books published in United States, $3,500,000, of which 
$1,100,000 were school-books. 

Number of steamboats on the waters of New York State was 
86. United States patents, 544. 

1831. 
Steel furnaces in United States, 14. Furnaces for glass and 



30 CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 

manufactures of clay, 21. Value of cabinet wares made, 
$10,000,000. Number of sheep, 20,000,000, valued at $2 per 
head. 

At the exhibition of the Franklin Institute, in Philadelphia, 
were exhibited samples of the natural yellow nankeen, black silk 
plush from American silk. 

The American Railroad Journal established. 

1832. • 

Number of railroads completed and in progress was 19 — nearly 
1400 miles long. 

Fall River; Massachusetts, where the first cotton mill was erected 
in 1812, now contains 13 factories. 

1833. • 

New York Mechanics' Institute incorporated. 

1834. 

The number of banks had increased from 3, in 1791, with a 
capital of $2,000,000, to 246, with an aggregate capital of 
$89,822,422, in 1816, Avhen the United States Bank Avas char- 
tered, until January 1 of the present year, when the number was 
502, with united capital of $168,827,803. 

Twenty carpet factories, with 511 looms. 

Aggregate value of all the manufactures in United States was 
from 325 to $350,000,000. 

The product of cotton estimated throughout the world to be 
900,000,000 pounds; of which the United States produce a little 
more than half— 460,000,000 pounds. 

Number of American steamers on Lake Erie, 31, — 234 schoon- 
ers and 3 brigs. First association of steamboat owners formed at 
Buffalo, where 11 steamboats, costing $360,000, were employed; 
and three trips were made to the upper lakes, two to Chicago and 
one to Green Bay. One of the trips to Chicago occupied 25 days 
and another 22 days. It has since been made in 4 days by a sail- 
ing vessel. 

Number of sugar refineries in the United States, 38. 



CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 31 

1835. 

State census of New York gave among other manufacturing 
establishments 112 cotton factories, 234 woolen, 13 glass, 63 rope, 
70 paper, 24 oil-cloth factories and 293 iron works. 

State census of Illinois gave 339 manufactories, 916 mills, 87 
manufacturing machines, and 142 distilleries. 

Ohio, 1,000,000 population; 120 newspapers, 65 in different 
towns, 32 of which are still published under their original names. 
The first cylinder printing press in the West was purchased for the 
Methodist Book Concern at Cincinnati, this year. The proprie- 
tors of the Cincinnati Gazette employed the first newspaper express 
ever run in the West; they obtained the President's message from 
Washington in 60 hours, at a cost of $200. Cincinnati was at 
this time 7 days distant from Pittsburgh, 21 from New Orleans, 
and 14 from New York. 

Nearly 100,000 wood and brass clocks made in Connecticut. 

1836 

Capital employed in manufacturing by machinery in United 
States, $80,000,000. Improvement in machinery causes a spin- 
dle to revolve 8000 times a minute instead of only 50 times, as 
formerly. In 1834 a person could spin more than double the 
weight of yarn in a given time than he could in 1829. 

Kepository of Arts of the American Institute in New York 
opened in May. 

The first manufacture of wrought-iron tubes and fittings for 
gas, steam, and water works in the United States, commenced in 
Philadelphia. 

Geological surveys of Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and 
New York, Georgia and Kentucky. 

120,000,000 yards of calico printed in the United States. 

1837. 

Geological surveys of Maine, Connecticut, Ohio, and Indiana. 
Consumption of anthracite coal in United States, 881,026 tons. 
First manufacture of machinists' tools in the United States, at 
Nashua, New Hampshire. 



32 CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 

Pressed glass tumblers and other drinking- vessels made, the 
process of making pressed glass being an American invention. 

1839. 
Hunfs 3Ierchanis' Ifagazine established. 

1840. 

The whole demand of the United States for leather supplied 
from her own tanneries. 

An establishment in New York turns out daily 50 tons of 
horse-shoes. 

Of hats more than enough for home consumption and a surplus 
for export. 

Soap and candles exported to the value of $1,000,000. 

A new pattern of mousseliue de laine arrived from France at 
14 cents per yard, and in sixteen days a Providence manufacturer 
had the same style of fabric selling in New York at 10 cents per 
yard. The manufacturer had but 12 days to engrave the new 
pattern on a copper cylinder, from which the engraving was raised 
on a steel cylinder, then hardened and made ready for impression; 
the compound of ingredients for colors discovered by chemical ex- 
periments, the cloth printed, dried, and cased for the market. 

With the stocking or power weaving loom a girl could knit a 
piece 28 inches long and 1 inch wide in a minute, and make 20 
pairs of drawers in one day, while by the hand loom two pairs 
were a week's work. 

Hooks and eyes, that thirty years previous were $1.50 per gross, 
were reduced to 15 cents per gross. 

In England it takes sixty females to stick in one day, by 
sunlight, ninety packs consisting of 302,460 pins. The same 
operation is performed near Derby, Connecticut, by one woman 
in the same time. Her sole occupation in the factory is to pour 
them, a gallon at a time, in a hopper, from whence they come out 
all neatly arranged upon their several })apers. 

In 1842 the quantity of iron produced in the United States but 
little exceeded 200,000 tons; by 1846 it exceeded 800,000 tons. 

In 1842 the coal sent to market was but 1,250,000 tons; in 1847 
it exceeded 3,000,000 tons. 



CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 33 

Within this decade 5941 inventions were patented, two of 
them the most important of this century, viz.: sewing machine 
and magnetic telegraph. 

Since Howe's patent, 300 improvements upon the sewing ma- 
chine have been patented. 

1850. 

Population by census of 1850, 23,191,876. 

An English writer has observed that the history of British 
manufactures furnishes abundant ground for astonishment, but 
that of American manufactures is much more marvelous. 

In 1850 the Federal Government did not count any establish- 
ment that produced less than $500 per year, and the astounding 
facts were revealed that the capital invested in manufactures ex- 
ceeded $550,000,000, and that the annual product had reached 
$1,019,000,000. Eighty-six per cent, of this was in 15 States, 
leaving to the other 21 States and Territories only 14 per cent, of 
the whole production. 

One manufacturing interest produced over $100,000,000 meal 
and flour. 

Three manufacturing interests produced over $50,000,000 boots, 
shoes, cotton, and lumber; while clo^thing, machinery, leather, 
and woolens produced from $25,000,000 to $50,000,000. 

Number of establishments, 123,025; capital, $553,245,351; 
cost of raw material, $551,123,822; male hands, 731,137; female 
hands, 225,922; value of products, $1,019,000,000. 

I860. 

Population by census of 1860, 31,443,321. In this decade the 
increase was over 86 per cent. The value of the manufactures 
aggregated $1,900,000,000. To produce this, 1,000,000 men and 
385,000 women were furnished em])loyment, or in all 1,385,000. 
Each of these maintained an average of 2i other individuals, 
making the whole number of persons supported by manufactures, 
4,847,500, or nearly one-sixth of the whole population. 

Total value of agricultural implements made in 1860 was 
$17,802,514, an increase of 160|^ per cent, since 1850, when it 
amounted to $6,842,611. 

Pig iron, 884,474 tons, valued at $19,487,790, an increase of 

3 



34 CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 

44^- per cent, upon the value returned in 1850. Bar and other 
rolled iron, 406,298 tons, valued at $22,248,796, an increase of 
39.5 per cent, over 1850. 

Product of coal mines in 1850 was $7,173,750; in 1860, over 
$19,000,000. 

The value of book, job, and newspaper printing was 
$39,428,043, of which $11,000,000 were in books, the value of 
the latter nearly eqiial to the whole product in 1850, which was 
$11,586,549. 

The product of flour and grist mills Avas $223,144,369; in 
1850, $136,000,000, an increase of 64.2 per cent. 

Distilleries, 1138, producing 88,000,000 gallons, valued at 
$24,253,176. 

Breweries, 969, producing 3,235,545 barrels, valued at 
$17,977,135. 

Cotton manufactures, $115,137,926, an increase of 76 per cent. 
in ten years. 

AVoolen, linen, and silk manufactures in 1850 was $45,281,764; 
in 1860, $68,865,963; an increase of over 51 per cent. 

Leather production in 1850 was $37,702,333; in 1860, 
$63,090,741 ; an increase of nearly 67 per cent. 

Boots and Shoes. — In 1850 there were 11,305 establishments, 
with a capital of $13,000,000, producing the value of $53,969,- 
408. In 1860, 2554 factories in New England employed a cap- 
ital of only $2516 less than in the United States at the former 
date, and produced the value of $54,767,077,— $800,000 more 
than the entire valuation of the business in 1850, an increase of 
82.8 per cent, over that year. 

Cabinet ware made in 1860 in the New England, Middle, and 
AYestern States reached the sum of $22,701,304, an increase of 
39.8 per cent, over that of those States in 1850, and exceeding the 
production of the whole United States in 1850. 

Pianos and Musical Insthuments. — New England, New 
York, and Pennsylvania produced musical instruments to the 
value of $5,791,807, an increase of 150 per cent, over 1850. New 
York alone made $3,392,577 worth, being $811,862 more than 
the whole amount in 1850. 

Jewelry and Watches. — In the New England and Middle 



CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 35 

States the production of these reached over $11,000,000; silver 
and silver-plated Avares, etc., over six and one-half million dollars, 
making $18,000,000, exclusive of gold leaf and foil ; and the 
assaying and refining the precious metals exceeding the product 
of the whole United States in 1850 by $7,016,908 in value. 

Chemicals and Gas. — The production of these exhibited a 
large increase. The quantity of the latter exceeded 5,000,000,000 
cubic feet, valued at $13,000,000. 

STATEMENT OF THE LEADING MANUFACTURES AND THE 
VALUE OP EA(JH PRODUCT FOR THE YEAR ENDING JUNE 
1, ]860. 

Flour and meal $224,000,000 

■ Cotton goods n5,000,000 

Lumber 96,000,000 

Boots and shoes 90,000,000 

Leather (including morocco and patent leather) 72,000,000 

Clothing 70,000,000 

Woolen goods 69,000,0u0 

Machinery, steam engines, etc 47,000,000 

Printing (book, job, and newspaper) 42,000,000 

Sugar refining 38,500.000 

Iron founding 28,500,000 

Spirituous liquors 25,000,000 

Cabinet furniture 24,000,000 

Bar and other rolled iron 22,000,000 

Pig iron 19,500,000 

Malt liquors 18,000,000 

Agricultural implements 17,800,000 

Paper 17,500,000 

Soap and candles 17,000,000 

MANUFACTURES OF PRINCIPAL CITIES BY CENSUS OF 1860. 

Number of Es- 
tablishmeuta. 

Philadelphia, Pa 6314 

Pittsburgh, Pa 1119 

New York, Brooklyn, 

and Williamsburg... 4374 

Newark, N.J 769 

Albany, N. Y 694 

Troy, N. Y 366 

Rochester, N. Y 545 

Buffalo, N.Y 404 

Portland, Maine 334 

Boston, Mass 1050 

Worcester, Mass 1357 

Providence, R. 1 1191 

Hartford, Conn 405 

Cincinnati, Ohio 2077 

Cleveland. Ohio 3S8 

Chicago, 111 467 

Detroit, Mich 363 

St. Louis, Mo 1125 

Baltimore, Md 1100 

Wilmington, Del 381 



Capital. 


Coat of Raw 


Male 


Female 


Value of 


Material. 


Hands. 


Hands. 


Products. 


§73,087,852 


$72,333,805 


69,388 


29,009 


$14,1048,658 


18,873,096 


12,553,984 


17,183 


2,184 


25,413,035 


61,171,757 


Not given 


65,470 


24,718 


193,333,686 


13,495,305 


Not given 


15,825 


6,908 


27,706,044 


9,634,079 


Not given 


8.032 


3,671 


16,585,025 


5,231,650 


Not given 


6,877 


4,669 


11,682,989 


4,145,030 


Not given 


5,136 


1,431 


4,145,030 


4,617,743 


Not given 


5,217 


380 


8,500,000 


2,898,263 


Not given 


2,699 


692 


6,091,924 


14,527,880 


20,254,277 


14,100 


4,993 


37,681,808 


13,334,769 


18,234,584 


18,190 


12,699 


37,092,920 


24,278,295 


19,858,515 


20,795 


11,695 


40,711,298 


11,171,200 


8,157,227 


8,437 


3,917 


16,827,016 


18,887,693 


25,087,683 


23,620 


6,403 


46,691,617 


2,676,963 


4,028,315 


3,794 


661 


0,887,737 


6,420,725 


6,591,445 


5,225 


228 


11,944,229 


4,132,266 


3,711,512 


3,565 


78 


6.400,043 


12,636,508 


15,905,012 


11,352 


752 


27,637,423 


8,009,107 


12,624,737 


12,388 


4,666 


21,083,517 


4,862,472 


5,613,066 


4,765 


948 


8,914,441 



36 



CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 



1870. 
GKAND TOTAL OF KAILROADS FROM 1845 TO 1874. 



Tear. Miles. 

1845 4,633 

1846 4,930 

1847 5,598 

1848 5,996 

1849 7,365 

1850 9,021 

1851 10,982 

1852 12,908 

1853 15,360 

1854 16,720 

1855 18,374 

1856 22,016 

1857 24,603 

1858 26,968 

1859 28,789 



Year. Miles. 

1860 30,635 

1861 

1862 32,120 

1863 33,170 

1864 , 33,908 

1865 35,085 

1866 36,827 

1867 39,276 

1868 42,255 

1869 47,208 

1870 52,898 

1871 60,568 

1872 66,735 

1873 70,683 

1874 72,623 



The greate.st number of miles in the States in 1876 were, viz.: 
Illinois, 6759; Pennsylvania, 5687; New York, 5250. The 
smallest number was in Washington Territory, 110. 

Population in 1870, 38,558,381. 



MANUFACTURES IN 1870 ACCORDING ^TO CENSUS. 
Number of establishments 252,148 

STEAM ENGINES. 

Horse power 1,215,711 

Number 40,191 

WATER WHEELS. 

Horse power 1,130,431 

Number 50,018 

All 2,053,996 

HANDS EMPLOYED. 

Males above sixteen 1,615,598 

Females above fifteen 323,770 

Youth 114,628 

Capital $2,118,208,769 

Wages 775,584,343 

Material 2,488,427,242 

Product 4,282,335,442 

Libraries in United States in 1870. — Number of all 
cla.sses, 164,815; volumes, 45,528,938. Number not private, 
56,015; volumes, 19,456,518. 

Churches in United States. — Organizations, 72,459 ; edi- 
fices, 63,082; sittings, 21,665,062; property, $354,483,581. 



CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 



37 



TONNAGE OF UNITED STATES, JUNE 30, 1875. 



Vessels. 

Sailing vessels 17,747 

Steam " 4,090 

Unrigged " 9,059 

'''" " not reported 1,680 



Tons. 

2,883,275.73 

1,119,766.51 

1,024,187.94 

198,115.87 



32,576 4,725,346.05 
NEWSPAPERS IN 1870, 1860, AND 1850. 

Number. Cii'culation. 

1870 5,871 20,000,000 

I860 4,051 13,663.409 

1850 2,526 5,142,177 

SCHOOLS OF ALL CLASSES IN 1870. 

Number 141,629 

Male. Female. 

Teachers 93,329 127,713 

Pupils 3,621,996 3,58'?,942 

PRODUCTIONS IN 1870. 

Bushels. 

Wheat— Spring '. 112,549,733 

Wheat— Winter 175,195,893 

Rye 16,918,795 

Indian Corn 760,944,548 

Oats 282,107,157 

Barley 29,761,305 

Buckwheat 9,821,721 

IMMIGRATION FROM 1861 TO 1874. 



Year. Number. 

1861 91,823 

1862 91,825 

1863 176,215 

1864 193,412 

1865 249,052 

1866 318,491 

1867 298,358 



Tear. Number. 

1808 297,215 

1869 395,923 

1870 378,796 

1871 367,789 

1872 449,482 

1873 437,004 

1874 277,493 



EXPORTS AND IMPORTS FOR 1875. 



IMPORTS. 



Merchandise $533,005,436 

Coin and bullion 20,900,717 



Total $553,906,153 



rOKEIGN EXPORTS. 



Merchandise $14,1.'')8,611 

Coin and bullion 8,275,013 



Total $22,433,624 



38 CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 

NET IMPORTS. 

Merchandise $518,846,825 

Coin and bullion ; 12,025,704 

Total $531,472,529 

DOMESTIC EXPORTS. 

Merchandise $524,880,624 

Coin and bullion 73,857,129 

Total $598,737,753 

The value of real and personal property as given in the census 
reports for the United States was as follows : 

1850 §7,185,780,228 

1860 10,159,616,069 

1870 30,069,518,507 

1876 (Estimated by the Chief of Statistics) 45,000,000,000 

Our material wealth during the period under review has been 
largely augmented by immigration, of which no record was kept 
until 1820. In a little more than the latter half of the century, 
or in the fifty-six and a half years from October 1, 1819, to March 
31, 1876, no less than 9,918,969 persons of foreign birth made 
their homes in our country. Tlie largest number in any single 
year was in 1872, when 449,483 immigrants landed upon our 
shores. The increment to our material wealth as com})uted by 
Dr. Edward Young, Chief of the United States Bureau of Sta- 
tistics, who "estimates the average material value of an immigrant 
at $800, amounts to the enormous sum of $455,175,200. 

Educational Changes since Last Century. — Improve- 
ment in public schools, their structure, their comforts, the course 
of studies therein, their grade from primary to normal, etc., and 
the absence of all books of a scientific character until of late years. 
Authors and their books adopted were about as follows : Tiie 
geography was that of Jedediah Morse, a small treatise published 
in 1784. The grammar of Lindley Murray was the standard 
previous to 1830. In 1804 there were fourteen diflcrcnt arith- 
metics, of which Pike's was the most popular and held its own 
for over forty years. The spelling book was that of Noali Web- 
ster, first published in 1783, which up to 1847 had sales by the 
million. 



CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 39 

Newspapers. — From a few in 1790 they are now numbered 
by the thousands. Dr. Franklin, when about issuing his paper in 
Philadelphia, was met by his friends with the argument that there 
were already three papers published there, and where was the ne- 
cessity for a fourth ? To which he replied, "Another paper will 
make more readers." In 1800 there were only about two hun- 
dred newspapers published. The first religious newspaper in the 
United States was in Boston, in 1815, called the Boston Recorder, 
by Nathaniel Willis, father of the poet N. P. Willis ; now all 
sects have them. 

Printing Press. — Franklin Printing Press (Pat. Off.), Avhich 
worked off 60 sheets per hour. Hoe's New Perfecting Press 
prints and folds 28,000 per hour. 

Fire Arms. — The first rifles made by machinery to use the 
minie ball were made at Hartford, Connecticut, and Windsor, 
Vermont, for the English Government, in 1860. The machinery 
and tools for the armory at Enfield, England, were made at 
Windsor, Vermont. The Enfield rifle was made in' England 
under the superintendence of a son of Vermont. The Armstrong 
gun, which gained for its reputed inventor the honor of knight- 
hood, was invented in America anterior to its appearance in Great 
Britain. 

Sewing Machines. — Elias Howe the inventor, in 1846. Two 
thousand patents issued for sewing machine attachments, and in 
1875 600,000 manufiietured and sold. 

Illuminating Gas. — The first city in the world to light its 
streets with gas was London, in 1815. The first in the United 
States was Baltimore, in 1816. 

Patents. — Number of patents in 1875 were 15,698. 
, Missionaries, etc. — In 1810 the American Board of Com- 
missioners for Foreign Missions was formed ; 1814, American 
Baptist Missionary Union was formed ; 1819, Methodist Missionary 
Society; 1833, Free Will Foreign Missionary Society; 1835, Board 
of Missions of Protestant Episcopal Church ; 1837, Foreign Mis- 
sion Board of Presbyterian Church. At this time we have in 
Europe and America forty-two foreign mission societies, sustain- 
ing 3500 ordained missionaries, which in 1872 contributed to the 
aims of their work $5,500,250. In 1833 the American Bible 



40 CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 

Society proposed to furnish the destitute families of tlie earth 
Avith Bibles ; home missions, tract societies, Sunday-school 
societies, temperance societies, Young IMen's Christian Associa- 
tions. 

Travel and its Improvements. — In the latter ]>art of the 
last century some attempts were made in Europe to propel 
machinery by steam, moving vessels by this motive power 
receiving particular attention, but without success. It was re- 
served for Robert Fulton, aided by Chancellor Livingstone, to 
accomplish this in 1805 by propelling with steam the first boat 
on the Hudson. This was in compliance with the exaction of 
the legislature that it should run not less than four miles an hour. 

Railroads. — The first railroad in the United States was con- 
structed at Quincy, Massachusetts, and was furnished in 1827; 
it conveyed granite from the quarries to a shipping point four 
miles distant. The first railway for passengers Avas the Baltimore 
and Ohio, fifteen miles of which were finished in 1830. The 
grandest and most stupendpus work of the age of its kind is the 
Pacific Railroad, completed in 1809. 

Electro-Magnetic Telegraph. — In 1832 Morse was on 
his way homeward from Europe, when he with others discussed 
the remarks of Franklin that electricity could be made to pass 
along a conductor any distance between two poles. Six years 
after, he presented his discovery to Congress, asking them to enable 
him to practically test his invention, which was granted; and in 
1844 the first line of telegraph was built between Baltimore and 
AA'ashington. The first message — " What hath God wrought!" — 
was sent by the daughter of Prof. Morse, the inventor. Then 
came the Atlantic Cable in 1858, with exchange of messages, and 
failure; and again in 1867 successful. 25,000 miles of copper 
wire, 35,000 miles of iron wire, and more than 400,000 miles of 
hempen strands ; 460,000 miles of fiibric, twenty times the cir- 
cumference of the earth. 

Our own Prometheus, Franklin, greater than the ancient god ; 
for whom there was no Mercury, no Mount Caucasus, and no 
Vultur; who was master of Juj)iter and his empire; to him — the 
once humble printer of Philadelphia — do we go for the source of 
the invention of the telegraph. 



CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 41 

WISDOM OF THE FATHEES. 

How the great heart of Sir Christopher Wren, when he stood 
beneath the finished dome of St. Paul's, must have pulsated with 
honest pride as he surveyed that magnificent structure, the work 
of his own genius; and which now honors him with the merited 
inscription : Do you seeJc his monument, look around. Could our 
fathers, now a century later, behold with us to-day the magnitude 
and unparalleled splendor of our temple of liberty, of which they 
were the architects, their great and patriotic hearts would swell 
with honest pride, on realizing how "very much better they 
builded than they knew." On the dome of this political temple 
we may write for them the honored inscription : Do you seek their 
monument, look around. 

For establishing the " new philosophy," Lord Macaulay declares 
that Francis Bacon " had the greatest mind ever vouchsafed to 
man." For establishing self-government, surely our fathers are 
justly entitled to the appellation of the wisest of mankind. For 
all that philosophy had done from Socrates to Bacon, all that pol- 
itics, in its multifarious forms, had done since governments were 
instituted among men, all that all the religions together on earth 
had done from the dawn of history to this day one hundred years 
ago, had been absolutely impotent either to give man political 
freedom or to render him happy. As the burning-glass con- 
centrates the solar rays, so our fatliers' minds seem to have con- 
centrated in themselves all the intellectual rays of the past six 
thousand years; nay, more, with that bold, innovative, inventive, 
and progressive spirit, so characteristic of free America, they ven- 
tured into unexplored regions of thought, and discovered that 
greatest of political truths, that man is cajmble of self-government. 
However great and glorious Columbus is, as a discoverer in the 
physical world, they must be allowed to far surpass him as dis- 
coverers in the world of thought. Such a discovery as this could 
have flown only from men whose mental constitutions, possessing 
the greatest originality and power, were, at the same time, refined 
and purified by the most elevated enlightenment. It was the 
unity of common sense and humanity that gave birth to the exalted 
idea of self-eovernment. 



42 CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 

Here, for tlie first time, was government made for man. Here, 
for the first time, was the dignity of manhood acknowledged, and 
the equality of conditions recognized. Here, for the first time, 
was man given a fair cliance in the race for life, — the poorest and 
most obscure having an equal chance, absolutely, with the richest 
and most distinguished. Here, for the first time, was man made 
self-reliant and self-sustaining, — his own master and his own ser- 
vant, — thrown entirely on his own responsibility. This developed 
a higher degree of manhood than the world had ever before seen or 
even dreamed of, for without responsibility there can be no fine de- 
velopment, either of man or of nation. No wonder, then, that 
the young nation went forth astonishing the world by its wonder- 
ful advances in civilization. 

A NATION OF HOMES. 

Here, for the first time, was beheld a nation of homes. Herein 
lies the beauty, the glory, the power, the stability and dura- 
bility of our great country. I lay it down as a political axiom, 
that, other things being equal, that government is the best, the 
strongest, and the most durable, where the greatest number of its 
citizens own their own homes ; where there are the greatest number 
of homesteads. Man always follows his interest. Arthur Young 
well said, '' Give a man nine years' lease of a garden, and he will 
turn it into a desert ; give a man entire possession of a rock, and 
he will turn it into a garden." What else to man, in the wide 
world, is like unto his home? How the heart thrills at the very 
mention of that word, — father and mother, sister and brother, 
wife and children, friends, books, comforts, happiness, — all that 
the heart of man loves or cares for, — all that this world gives that 
is worth caring for ; these make home. Home is a social magnet 
ever influencing the heart of man. Ask the humble peasant to 
exchange his homely thatched cottage for a marble palace in 
another land. " No," he says ; " I prefer ray home." Ask the 
rugged mountaineer to leave his rude cabin, amid the sterile and 
rocky cliffs, for princely estates amid the luxurious tropics of a 
distant country. " No," he replies ; " I cannot leave my home." 
Ask the Esquimaux to exchange his icy hut and his train-oil and 
blubber for the sweetest villa and the most delicious viands of 



CENTENNIAL FOURTH OP JULY ORATION. 43 

sunny Italy, and he will answer you, "No ; I will not leave my 
home." Where a man's possessions are greatest, there his interests 
are greatest ; where he has no possessions, he can have little or no 
interest. 

Legislators, multiply the homes, and you Avill multiply the 
patriots, — the pillars of the State; for he who has a home to love 
and defend, will love and defend his country. Keep sacred and 
guard with vigilance the beneficent homestead law, which gives to 
every man witli a wife one hundred and sixty acres of land, and 
ten acres for each of his children, and to every single man eighty 
acres. Behold our wide western domain ! where beautiful and 
fruitful nature is standing neglected, yet yearning for suitors; 
barren, because there is no fructifying element — no labor. Here 
is room and plenty for a thousand millions. Here the most beau- 
tiful and elegant homes might be made, with but little labor, pos- 
sessing every comfort and every luxury that the heart of man 
could desire, where domestic bliss would find for its unambitious 
self a perennial summer. The object of government, in its ividest 
sense, is simply to give man a hajypy home. To fix the happiness 
and virtue of a nation on a solid foundation, it must rest on a re- 
ciprocal dependence between all the orders of citizens. The greater 
the number of homes, the more perfect will be this reciprocity. 

LABOK. 

Here, for the first time, was the respectability and dignity of 
human labor acknowledged. Human labor, the greatest benefac- 
tor of mankind, the most potent engine of/civilization, one of the 
greatest promoters of morality. Since man first "ate his bread 
in the sweat of his face" human labor had been driven forth with 
the curse of Cain upon it; had suffered social ostracism, been de- 
nied the shelter of the house it built, of the privilege of sitting 
in the chair it made, of a place at the table it framed, of wearing 
the cloth it had woven, of eating the food it had produced, until 
our government emancipated it from the bondage of disgrace and 
slavery, and stamped it with the seal of respectability and dignity. 
And here it has become a mighty magician, and worked more 
wonders among us than ever Aladdin's lamp performed. It has 
prostrated a wilderness from Plymouth Rock to the Golden Gate ; 



44 CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 

it has leveled the mountains and filled up the valleys from ocean 
to ocean ; it has networked the land Mith railroads and canals, and 
gauzed it with telegraph wires ; it has dotted the land with mil- 
lions of happy homes, and has brought every necessary and every 
luxury, not only to the rich, but to the poor man's door. 

THE UNION PACIFIC KAILROAD. 

One of its most glorious and most enduring monuments is the 
Union Pacific Railroad. Human labor built that road from 
Omaha to San Francisco — nearly two thousand miles in length — ■ 
in three years and a half. It was one of the grandest and most 
successful enterprises the world ever saw, and must ever remain a 
noble and enduring monument to American enterprise and Amer- 
ican labor. In building that road almost every conceivable obstacle 
had to be overcome, and every difficulty surmounted ; but Amer- 
ican skill, and perseverance, and energy triumphed. Deserts were 
crossed, savage wildernesses penetrated, mountains — rock-ribbed 
and snow-crowned — scaled ; and the Atlantic and Pacific made to 
shake hands across the continent of America. What an evidence 
is this gigantic work of man's almost omnipotence in this world ! 
Watch the iron monster — the locomotive — the thunderbolt on 
WHEELS — now struggling up the mountain side, and now thunder- 
ing down it into the valley below", careering away with lightning 
speed and inexhaustible strength, like some omnipotent messenger. 
What a speck is man beside a mountain ! yet he triumphs over 
it as the viewless winds over the mighty oaks of the forest, crush- 
ing in its very ribs, — disemboweling it, — and, with an audacious 
ambition that M^ould mock the gods, tears the granite crown 
from its imperial head, and sets the badge of civilization — 
intellectual labor — there. 

These are the works that exhibit man in his true greatness — 
that show in their true light the grandeur and dignity of human 
nature; these are the splendid evidences of the triumphs of mind 
over matter. What a magnificent spectacle that great army of 
railroad Avorkmen must have presented — carrying civilization in 
their peaceful march into the very heart of the savage wilderness, 
cheered on by the inspiring song of labor, rung out by their 
brawny arras with ten thousand sledge-hammers, sounding the 



CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 45 

grandest anvil chorus that ever awoke the solemn silence of the 
desert ! 

The author of The Spectator said of Csesar, that the Alps and 
Pyrenees melted before him. But what are the Alps and the 
Pyrenees to the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada ? And 
what was marching Roman legions over those big hills of Europe, 
ten or fifteen miles a day, compared with driving the iron horse, 
more than twice that many miles an hour, over the rock-crowned 
and snowy-crested summits crossed by the Union Pacific Railroad? 
The compliment Addison ^^aid to Ctesar — the greatest compliment 
he could have paid that greatest of mankind — I bring to-day, 
augmented, as a just tribute to human labor, made respectable 
and dignified by our free institutions. 

EDUCATION. 

Here for the first time was universal education established ; dis- 
pensing knowledge, as the light of the sun is dispensed, equally 
on the rich and on the poor. Among all the great and glorious 
things our country has done for human progress, none are equal to 
this. It is the planting from which the most opulent harvest for 
universal good is to be gathered. But education is optional with 
us ; it should be compulsory. It is too local ; it should be made 
national. The Constitution of the United States should declare 
that every child in the land shall be educated. The narrowest- 
minded political philosopher will scarcely have the hardihood to 
maintain that a government shall have power to punish crime by 
depriving a citizen of his liberty, by imprisonment, or of his life, 
by hanging, and that it shall not have the power to prevent him 
from committing crime, by whatsoever compulsory means. Since 
almost all crimes, great and small, spring directly from the un- 
educated classes, it follows, that to educate these, would be to 
lessen crime. If a small fraction of the money we expend in build- 
ing and maintaining prisons were judiciously expended in compul- 
sory education, — in sowing the seeds of practical knowledge and 
wholesome morality in the minds of those children, who, if not 
compelled to be the recipients of this golden gift, would grow up 
schooled and practiced in all manner of vice and wickedness, — the 
next generation might turn most of our prisons to educational and 



46 CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 

charitable purposes. Grand, inspiring idea ! that every dirty, 
ragged child of every beggar and felon in the land, that the chil- 
'dren from the dens of thieves and the haunts of iniquity, breath- 
ing a pestilential moral atmosphere, shall be compelled to receive 
a gratuitous education in knowledge, virtue, and morality ! 

Long centuries before Bacon wrote, "Knowledge is power," the 
annals of crime had written, with as horrid legibility as if Jupiter 
had branded it with his lightning-fire on the ebon cheek of the 
storm cloud — that " Ignorance is Power !" the most active, ungov- 
ernable and potent power in the world, for wrong and evil ; it is 
the most fruitful of all the sources of crime ; it is the very trojiical 
soil of vice and wickedness, which grow here with the rankest 
luxuriance. But it is the business of government to suppress 
crime, and to prevent it if possible. One of the chief ends of gov- 
ernment, also, is to protect our lives and property. To this end it 
erects pillories and whipping-posts, and builds jails and peniten- 
tiaries, and supports armies of police, and all this at a fabulous 
cost. To educate the ignorant would be a better and a cheaper 
means, nay, the best and cheapest, to this end. To house, feed, 
clothe, and school bad children, to be made good citizeus, is surely 
a far wiser, cheaper, and more humane course, than — neglecting 
this — to be compelled finally to house, feed, and clothe them as 
bad men and women (in jail) for mere punishment's sake, without 
hope of reformation. The latter is justice, but the former is good- 
ness, and, since goodness moves in a larger circle than justicej it 
should take precedence. It is not only the right of Government 
to establish compulsory education, but it is its paramount duty. Xot 
only for the security of person and property, but for its own 
security ; for the life of the nation depends, absolutely, upon the 
annihilation of ignorance and the ubiquitous reign of refined in- 
telligence. "Educate the people," was the admonition of William 
Penn, to the colonists who settled this great State. "Educate the 
people," was Washington's legacy to the nation. " Educate the 
people," was ever on the lips of Thomas Jefferson ; and Napo- 
leon I. said, " The only true conquests — those which awaken no 
rejrret — are those obtained over ignorance. The most honorable 
as well as the most useful pursuit of nations is that which con- 
tributes to the extension of human intellect." Never was the 



CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 47 

adage, " An ounce of preventive is worth a pound of cure," so 
applicable as it is in this case. Destroy ignorance and you will 
destroy all the seeds of moral evil. It will not do for the enemies 
of compulsory education to cry out, Where is our liberty ? Where 
our free-agency? There is no such thing as absolute liberty and 
free-agency in civilization ; for civilization means restraint. It 
pens up the moral forces of man to obtain power for driving the 
great engine of human progress, as the iron boiler pens up the 
steam to generate power for driving the locomotive. Absolute 
liberty means social and political chaos. Cicero said, " Liberty 
consists in doing that which is permitted by law." 

Legislators can not learn too soon that ignorance is the most 
costly, troublesome, and most dangerous enemy to the State. 
Ignorance produces the imperfection of the laws, and their imper- 
fection the vices of the people. Knowledge causes the contrary 
effect. Ignorance not only plunges a people into effeminacy, 
but even extinguishes in them the sentiments of humanity ; and 
humanity is the only virtue in man truly sublime. 

The more learning a people have, the more virtuous, powerful, 
and happy they will be. It is not the inconstancy of nations, 
but their ignorance, that so frequently overturns the edifice of the 
strongest government. 

I do not see the power and glory of our great nation so much 
in its agriculture, manufactures, trade and commerce, as in that 
broad culture and healthy morality that must spring from the 
universal education of our people. ' By education, I do not mean 
simply reading and writing ; but that higher and more important 
course of combined mental and physical discipline, which shall 
produce a sound mind in a sound body. That which will adorn 
the minds of our youths with the most exalted virtues, modesty, 
justice, humanity, equity, prudence, temperance, and patience ; 
that which will inculcate truth, honesty, morality, and charity ; 
that which will give them industry, frugality, courage, bravery, 
and fortitude. Our schools should be adorned with paintings 
and statuary, representing the great men and the great deeds of 
our nation, that the youthful mind and heart may be impressed 
with the great and sublime virtues of patriotism. The science 
of government should be a part, and a prominent part, of every 



48 CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 

system of education. All this depends upon the legislator, who 
brings weal or woe to the nation. 

A good legislation ought to include that of a good education, 
for the greatest obstacle to man's felicity is ignorance. On legis- 
lation alone depend the vices, the virtues, the power, and the 
felicity of a people. 

Where shall we look for prompt amelioration or for final ex- 
tirpation of the vices of society, and of the crimes of political 
circles in our country, if not to education ? You may bend the 
stripling oak as you will, but you can do nothing with it as the 
forest monarch. You cannot, as a rule, make bad men and bad 
women good; even Juvenal's satires could not banish vice from 
Rome; but you may, without doubt, by leading bad boys and 
bad girls through the paths of knowledge and virtue, make good 
men and women out of them. The school must not only instruct 
the mind — it must soften and polish the manners. If ignorance 
is dangerous, vulgarity is disgusting and brutalizing, and vulgarity 
presents a lamentable spectacle over all our land. Good home in- 
fluenGe is rarely to be had at home ; therefore, let our schools make 
up to our youth this priceless desideratum ; for the perfection of 
human nature is to be found in the unity of intelligence and 
amiability — that is, in good manners. 

Let us never forget that the life and liberties of this nation — 
the perpetuation of our self-government — depends upon the proper 
and thorough training of our ciiildren. Believing myself to be 
the humblest and most unworthy of all those who hold the high 
honor I hold to-day (by the too flattering partiality of my fellow- 
citizens), I am yet bold enough to aay — so strongly is my mind 
impressed with the belief that the rights of man and our free 
government can be secured only by the dispensation of universal 
intelligence — that of all the Centennial orations that will be de- 
livered to-day, that by our posterity a century hence will be con- 
sidered the best, which shall give the best advice in regard to a 
system of national compulsory education. I regret, from the bottom 
of ray heart, that I have neither the time nor the ability to do 
this great subject justice. As in Catholic Europe — according to 
the adage — all roads lead to Rome, so all the great interests of 
this country — that the minds of our greatest statesmen are so ex- 



CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 49 

ercised about — centre in education ; whatever is second, education 
is first. 

INTELLECTUAL EMANCIPATION. 

Broad as our great country is, let the spirit of our free institu- 
tions be broader. Let them be great, grand, noble, elevating, and 
sublime in their freedom and scope. 

Physical emancipation is one of our accomplished glories — tlie 
horrid music of the iron shackles of the slave shall never more 
make discord with the sweet strains of "Hail Columbia" and the 
" Star-Spangled Banner." But we have a still greater and more 
glorious act of freedom to perform — the mind of man is in bond- 
age; we must have intellectual emancipation. Slavery of 
thought is worse than slavery of body. 

" Let us ponder boldly ; 'tis a base 

Abandonment of reason to resign 
Our right of thouglit— our last and only place of refuge; 

E'en from our birth the faculty divine 
Is chained and tortured — cabin'd, cribb'd, confined, 

And bred in darkness, lest the truth should shine 
Too brightly on the unprepared mind." 

The intellectual man is held in bondage by religious tyranny 

and intolerance, 

— " whose veil 
Mantles the earth with darkness, until right 
And wrong are accidents, and men grow pale. 

Lest their own judgments should become too bright. 

And their free thoughts be crimes, and earth have too much light." 

While our country is the freest in the world from the curse of 
religious tyranny and intolerance, there is yet abroad in our land, 
I am grieved to say, too much of this abominable and dangerous 
element. It badly comports with the spirit of American freedom ; 
where liberty of conscience is guaranteed; where thought ought 
to be free as the mote in the sunbeam that knows no bounds. 
The free spirit of our government is in harmony with Machiavelli 
when he says, " Man has a right to think all things, speak all 
things, write all things, but not to impose his opinions;"' and with 
Milton when he said, " Give me the liberty to know, to think, to 
believe, and to utter freely, according to conscience, above all 

4 



50 CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 

other liberties." Ours is not the country to tolerate Theological 
— Procrustean beds ; for even the greatest toleration cannot ever 
be tortured to mean more than to tolerate that which is tolerable, 
and nothino; is so intolerable as relio-ious intolerance, 

AYhen our government is so tolerant and charitable as to ask 
no questions about religious belief, as to have no religious test laws, 
it is the most unwarrantable assurance and assumption — to use no 
stronger terms — in any institution, of whatever class or kind, to do 
so; since they all live, and move, and have their being in the gov- 
ernment; it is for the fraction to assume equality with the whole. 

The enlightened spirit of the age commands us to imitate both 
the wisdom and the charity of that very learned and distinguished 
English Bishop, Warburton, who, on one occasion, when Lord 
Sandwich said he did not know the difference between Orthodoxy 
a:id Heterodoxy, replied, " Orthodoxy, my lord, is my doxy, and 
Heterodoxy is another man's doxy." 

YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION. 

There is a rapidly growing institution in this country that, I 
believe, is pregnant with this tolerant and charitable spirit, and 
which, if so, eventually will destroy the hateful rivalry of creeds; 
that institution is the Young Men's Christian Association. It has 
a sublime career of usefulness before it. May its chariot of Re- 
formation roll on in living grandeur, ever teaching, yet willing to 
be taught, gathering new accessions of truth and beauty, and dis- 
pensing toleration and charity, till religious persecution shall be 
banished from the earth. It is progressive, and therefore worthy 
of commendation. 

I am now naturally brought to the consideration of the import- 
ant subject of 

CHURCH AND STATE. 

You may well start and grow pale at the announcement. But 
this mischievous, cruel, envious, ambitious, sanguinary, rule-or- 
ruin hideous monster — this king of Pandemonium — is actually 
engrafted on our government, and exercising authority, and strug- 
gling as life with death, for supreme power. Like the curse of 
slavery — so opposed to the spirit of our free institutions — it is not 



CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. ^\ 

the offspring of American freedom, but, like slavery, was engrafted 
on us by Monarchical Europe. 

Of all the newspapers and books that I have read, of all the 
speeches and sermons I have heard, I have never once known this 
subject alluded to. Can it be possible that the American people 
are so indifferent to, or so ignorant of, this danger of dangers? 
Can it be possible that this is the first public tocsin of alarm that 
has baen sounded ? Would that I had the ability to sound the 
alarm in proportion to tlie danger. But I have not. Like Mark 
Antony, " I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, action, nor 
utterance, nor power of speech," to awaken in your minds a full 
appreciation of the danger. Any connection — the most trivial — 
between politics and religion is Church and State. In our Na- 
tional Congress, in our State Legislatures, in the Army and Navy, 
religion is employed. Chaplains are employes, and "we, the 
people," are taxed to pay them. This is Church and State — on a 
small scale, to be sure, but still. Church and State. It was not 
" nominated in the bond" that our government should furnish us 
with religion. It is no more its business to furnish us with re- 
ligion than it is its business to furnish us with coal in winter and 
ice in summer. The duties of government are not paternal. Its 
business is to protect our persons and our property ; to afford to the 
greatest number the greatest amount of happiness. As to our Na- 
tional and State legislators, if they want religion, let them pay for 
it ; and since our government, Avithout remorse, sends our soldiers 
and sailors from their homes and families — the dearest ties on 
earth — for years; if it can do this, it may also, without injury to 
the national conscience, separate them from verbal religious teach- 
ing — for every man can have his Bible, if he wishes it. If Pro- 
testant clergymen may be employed by the State, so may Catholic 
priests : and these may perform mass ; and so may the Jewish 
doctors be employed: and these may bring the services of the 
synagogue into the halls of legislation. One has exactly the same 
right there as the other. An opportunity may, nay, will, give these 
thei^ turn sooner or later, if Church and State is not broken up. 
It is not the business of government to furnish food for helpless, 
starving infants; and it is still less its business to furnish spiritual 
food for adults. There are too many good, honest, but greatly 



52 CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 

deluded people, who think our political bread ought to be spread 
with theological butter. Petitions are pouring into both liouses 
of the United States Congress, praying for the recognition of God 
and Christianity in the Constitution; and meetings are being held 
for the same purpose all over the land. I protest against this 
most unwarrantable and unnecessary innovation, with mind, soul 
and heart, as showing the most ultra Church and State tendency, 
and as being, therefore, dangerous to the life and the liberties of 
this nation and people. 

There is nothing truer — as all history shows — than that the 
prosperity and happiness of a people does not depend on the purity 
of their loorship, but on the excellence of their legislation. Lord 
^lacaulay says (Prefoce to Lays of Ancient Rome), " The old 
Romans had some great virtues — fortitude, temperance, veracity, 
spirit to resist oppression, respect for legitimate authority, fidelity 
in the observing of contracts, disinterestedness, and ardent public 
spirit;" yet these same Romans were Pagans. 

"Church and State" means ignorance and superstition ; national 
debility, and sloth, and pusillanimity; it means Protestant against 
Catholic and Catholic against Protestant; bringing deadly strife 
and protracted, bloody war ; for this recognition of God and 
Christianity in the Constitution, that is asked for, means an 
Established Protestant Church in the United States. The 
Protestants number 20,000,000, the Catholics 6,000,000; who 
doubts that the former would oppose the progress of the latter 
at every step; as the latter would oppose the former if they 
had the power. It will not do to say of tliis subject that it is 
too insignificant to be seriously considered. It is the part of 
wisdom not to despise small things. From the invisible morning 
mist come the black storm-clouds of noon, bringing the fearfid 
tempest, and the awful thunder, and the horrid lightning. This 
ambition of religion for universal supremacy, for absolute power, 
is dangerous. You can no more separate absolute power and 
wrong than you can separate matter and gravitation. No danger 
could be more threatening to our national existence than the 
unity of Church and State. For we should then have from our 
theological statesmen that S[)iritual despotism so inimitably and 
forcibly described by Milton : 



CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 53 

*' Then shall they seek to avail themselves of names, 
Places, and titles, and with these to join 
Secular power, though feigning still to act 
By spiritual, to themselves approjyriat'mg 
The Spirit of God, promis'd aliiie and given 
To all believers; and froui that pretence. 
Spiritual laws by carnal power shall force 
On every conscience ; laws which none shall find 
Left them enroU'd, or what the spirit within 
Shall on the heart engrave. 

" Wolves shall succeed for teachers, grievous wolves. 
Who all the sacred mysteries of Heaven 
To their own vile advantages shall turn 
Of lucre and ambition, and the Truth 
With superstitions and traditions taint." 

Then would be born that same religious frenzy that raised the 
club of Cain, that caused the first murder; that poured the poison- 
ous hemlock down the throat of Socrates ; that nailed Jesus Christ 
to the cross. The whole land would be drunk with blood ! If 
history is worth anything, it holds up a solemn warning to this 
government not to touch religion. 

The effects of the unity of religion with this government may 
be well illustrated by that horrible vision of Dante; where Buoso 
d'Abbati is wounded by a serpent, which relinquishes its hold 
and stretches itself out at his feet. Buoso fixes his eyes upon it, 
but cannot utter a word. He staggers and gasps as if overpowered 
by lethargy or fever. The eyes of the man and the reptile are 
steadfastly fixed on each other. From the wound of Buoso and 
from the mouth of the serpent thick volumes of smoke proceed, 
and as soon as these unite the nature of the two beings is changed. 
Arms are seen to issue from the body of the serpent, while the 
limbs of the man contract and disappear under the scaly figure of 
his adversary. While one erects himself, the other grovels upon 
the earth ; and the two accursed souls, who have interchanged 
their bodies, separate with mutual execrations. 

Establish Church and State, and, when religion has taken on 
the body of politics, and politics has taken on the body of religion, 
and our liberties are gone forever, the two accursed things will 
separate with mutual execrations. 

Establish Church and State, and long before the people should 



54 CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 

meet again to celebrate their second hundredth anniversary, not 
only will our freedom have departed, but our beautiful national 
emblems, that still might warm a patriotic glow, will have been 
destroyed or disfigured. This beautiful flag may bear a grinning 
skull and cross-bones ; the historic paintings in the rotunda of the 
National Capitol may have transformed themselves into inquisi- 
torial scenes and i>ersecuted martyrs ; the Goddess of Liberty, 
crowning all, will have given place to a colossal figure of the cru- 
cifixion of Christ. 

Let us ponder well the lines of Byron : 

" A thousand years scarce serve to form a state ; 
An hour may hiy it in the dust ; and when 
Can man its shatter'd splendor renovate, 
Kecall its virtues back, and vanquish Time and Fate?'' 

Our 1.30,000 public schools, with their 200,000 teachers, to- 
gether with our 6000 newspapers, with a circulation of 21,000,000, 
issuing 1,600,000,000 copies annually, are the omnipotent moral 
weapons — and not the National Government — to right religious 

wrongs. 

OUR GREAT REBELLION. 

From this threatened danger let me turn to one that is past — 
akin to it — that the spirit of freedom, whose Promethean heat, 
almost omnipotent, met and defeated and annihilated, as I hope 
and believe it may meet and annihilate this. 

For long years peace and prosperity and happiness were in the 
land. There was no war, and we thought there could be no war. 
But, alasT for the instability of human institutions. Every pic- 
ture is made up of lights and shades. He who paints the historic 
picture of our country, with all its beautiful lights and rainbow 
tints, will have much very dark shading to do. There will be a 
delightful troj)ical summer of freedom in that picture, and there will 
be a chilling, desolate, arctic winter night of slavery in it. Hos- 
tile elements can never work harmoniously together. We had 
freedom and slavery side by side ! In twenty-five years from the 
discovery of America by Columbus, there was introduced into 
this country that accursed germ of slavery, that grew and spread 
with tropical exuberance, equal to the world-like vegetation it was 
first planted among, until its pestilential influence was more dam- 



CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 55 

ning than war or famine, and whose poison was to be eradicated, 
in our own country, only after it had deluged scores of battle- 
fields with blood, sent hundreds of thousands of precious lives to 
their untimely graves, taxed us with billions of debt, and draped 
the land in mourning. 

From 1517, when the first Africans were imported, to the 
breaking out of the rebellion in this country, 1861, three hundred 
and forty-four years, Africa had charged against America tiiirty- 
one millions-of her black sons and daughters. I will here notice 
but one black page in this book of the blackest deeds that ever 
disgraced any age : three millions of these had died on the passage 
and were thrown overboard into the Atlantic. Since they were 
nearly all adults, if we allow their average height to have been 
five feet four inches, this multiplied by three million will give 
sixteen million feet, over three thousand miles. Place those skel- 
etons head to foot, and they will pave the bottom of the Atlantic 
from America back to Africa. 

I forbear to dwell upon this ghastly and most horrible picture, 
and only introduce it as a historic fact, to show that nations, no 
moi'e than individuals, can do wrong with impunity. As certain 
as that night follows day, retribution will follow wrong doing. 

"Time's glory is not only to turn the giddy round of fortune's wheel, 
But to wrong the wronger, till he render right." 

Though the whole western hemisphere was almost equally to 
blame for the sin of slavery, yet the tempest of retribution, gath- 
ering the storm clouds from every quarter of the New World, let 
loose the thunderbolt of war upon our fair land. The storm of 
civil war which had been gatherino; on the distant horizon of the 
North and South for years, reached the zenith of our political sky 
in 1861, and burst with wild and terrible fury upon our then 
happy country, holding on its high career of blood and carnage 
for four long years. You all know, alas! too well, the history of 
that dreadful and momentous struggle, and I cannot, to-day, tear 
open the graves of the myriad dead to place their precious contents 
again in battle array, for mere rhetoric's sake. You know how 
the scale vibrated between victory and defeat, and how freedom, 
in the fire of war, like gold in furnace flung, grew stronger for 

L.ofC. 



56 CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 

the test, until slavery was annihilated, and freedom gloriously and 
victoriously triumphant. 

" For freedom's battle once begun, 
Bequeathed by bleeding sire to son, 
Though baffled oft is ever won." 

The Revolutionary war left us free with slavery (how para- 
doxical !), but the great Rebellion left us free without slavery — free 
indeed! Now every man throughout our broad land may sit 
under his own vine and fig-tree and none shall make him afraid. 
Of all others, this was freedom's battle, and I rejoice as an Ameri- 
can that it was fought on the soil of America — decidedly for 
freedom — for all mankind — for all ages! 

THE NATION'S DEAD. 

While we rejoice to-day in our own and the nation's life and 
freedom, let us not forget the dead who bequeathed to us this 
precious, priceless legacy. Let us not forget those who stood as a 
bulwark between us and death and slavery. 

If he who has exhibited his zeal and patriotism for the honor 
and glory of his country on many a bloody battle-field — who has 
fought, and bled, and died, that his and our country might inherit 
an eternal life of liberty — will not awaken in us, in the highest de- 
gree, the sentiments of humanity and gratitude, then those senti- 
ments must, indeed, be dead within us. The dead have always a 
claim upon us ; but our country's dead have a special claim upon 
us. To them we owe an immeasurably greater duty than we can 
ever owe to the civilian dead, however worthy the latter may have 
been. To our country's dead we owe the nation's gratitude ; we 
owe it to them to embalm their great deeds in the affections of the 
nation, and to immortalize them by writing their history in letters 
of gold on the national heart. 

Let us adopt the noble example of Greece. A Grecian could 
turn his eyes nowhere over his devoted land that his gaze would 
not be met by the sight of statues and monuments erected in 
honor of the nation's dead, who had died fighting the battles of their 
country. They had annual orations, and floral decorations, in 
their honor. The helpless, both the old and the young, of the 
family of the dead soldier were tenderly, bountifully cared for by 



CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 57 

the State. Know ye not how much all this served to cultivate 
and perpetuate that strong passion for liberty, that zeal for their 
country's cause, that ardor for their country's glory, that made the 
Grecian so valorous and so invincible in war? Let us be in- 
structed by the lesson. 

OUR FLAG. 

Pusillanimous, indeed, must this nation become, before it can 
forget the millions who so often carried this beautiful flag, this 
national standard of ours, to victory, and the hundreds of thou- 
sands who died for its honor and our country's freedom. When, 
on the 23d of September, 1873, while traveling in Peru, I stood 
in the crater of the Arequipa volcano waving this little flag, of 
the stars and stripes, to the breeze, three and a half miles above 
the level of the sea, I confess to a momentary feeling of pride and 
exultation when I thought that I had carried the flag of my 
country to a loftier elevation than it had ever before been carried 
— more than six hundred feet above the highest point of land in 
North America, the land that gave it birth. But my self-con- 
gratulation was of short duration ; for I quickly remembered 
that those American demi-gods who, in our great rebellion, went 
down to death for this flag, planted theirs on a moral height which 
dwarfed the physical elevation at which I placed it. 

I left the mate of this flag for the eye of the condor of the 
Andes ; they planted theirs on a moral Himalaya, where all the 
nations of the earth shall sec it for ever. If the United States of 
America shall ever forget to love, honor, and cherish their names, 
with the fondness of a young mother for her first-born, it can be 
only when a political apoplexy — from whatever cause — shall have 
paralyzed the patriotic heart of our great country.* 

National ingratitude is monstrous. Let us never be charged 
with it. Our Revolutionary Fathers were not at all honored as 
they should have been. To mention but one instance, the grave of 

JOHN MORTON, 

here in our own city, was without an honorable or conspicuous 
mark for three-quarters of a century. John Morton, that im- 

* For an account of the author's ascent of the Arequipa volcano, see Bul- 
letin of American Geographical Society, No. viii., 1874. 



58 CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 

mortal Peniisylvaiiian, that illustrious and courageous patriot, 
who, when the balances holding our freedom or slavery were 
poised, threw his influence on the side of freedom, — who gave the 
casting vote when six were for and six against separating from 
England, — which made this a free and independent nation. This 
was, under all the circumstances, the greatest act of moral hero- 
ism ever performed by man. The history of the past has nothing 
to equal it, — the future cannot excel it. I would rather have the 
glory that justly belongs to John Morton, and which the genera- 
tions a thousand years hence will lavishly bestow upon him, than 
to have had all the glory of all triumphs ever decreed to the 
mightiest conquerors of Greece and Rome. 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

While we honor the dead soldiers, all time and all ages, while 
freedom is loved and slavery is hated, will sing the praises of 
him who, like the nation's myriad dead, gave up his life that, 
in his own immortal language, " this government of the people, 
by the people, and for the })eople, might not perish from the 
earth." (Addressing Lincoln's portrait.) Oh, thou great high- 
priest of liberty ! 

"While the tree 
Of freodom'.s withered trunk puts forth a leaf, 
Even for thy tomb a garland let it be" — 
Thou freedom's champion and the people's chief — 
Our new-born Washington, with reign, alas ! too brief. 

It was said of Brutus, " Tiiis was the noblest Roman of them 
all." In whatever distant a'jre the great rebellion and its chief 
actors may be spoken of, every lover of liberty throughout the 
world will ever declare of Abraham Lhicoln, This was the noblest 
American of them all. Citizens and statesmen, emulate his 
virtues ! 

Let the granite and marble column^ rise all over the land in 
honor of the nation's dead. From the stony pages of these monu- 
ments future generations may read the epic story of those in whose 
honor they were reared, and draw from them, if need be, fresh 
inspirations of patriotism. Proud marks they will be, too, of a 
nation's gratitude ; there they will stand — the soldiers' and sailors^ 
monuments — when long centuries shall have passed away; stand 



CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 59 

to record for the most distant posterity the glorious deeds of 
those mighty dead of the great rebellion, but for whose loyalty, 
patriotism, and heroic valor our sun of liberty had set for ever in 
an eternal night. 

PUBLIC DEBT. 

Our public debt is, in round numbers, $2,000,000,000 ; but the 
wealth of the nation is $45,000,000,000. 

He who owes but one dollar of every twenty-two and a half he 
possesses is not oppressed. 

Or thus : Our population is 45,000,000. So each individual's 
share is less than fifty dollars. At six per cent, this is less than 
three dollars a year for each individual, and this is not oppres- 
sive, being less than one cent a day. 

The United States has at work every day 12,500,000 people. 
If each of these should contribute five cents a day from his wages, 
it would pay the debt within ten years. 

OUR FUTURE. 

With an enlightened, self-sustaining governmental policy, where- 
in the great interests of agriculture, manufacture, trade and com- 
merce shall be equally sustained; wherein capital and labor shall 
be made friends ; with human rights secured ; with the experience 
of the past to guide us in the future, I see no reason why our 
nation may not traverse Time's eternal course for ages upon ages. 
The life of a nation is very erroneously likened to that of an 
individual or that of a tree, with its youth, manhood, old age, 
and death. It would be much better to compare it to a river — 
for ever pouring on to the sea, though eternally exhausting its 
fountain heads, its life-giving sources, yet these are as eternally 
being replenished by their aquatic nutriment, the moisture, coming 
back from the sea in clouds and mist. 

Nearly a century ago the great English statesman, Edmund 
Burke, alluding to this very subject, used the following philosophi- 
cal and cheerful language .•' " I am not of opinion that the race of 
men and the commonwealths they create, like bodies of individ- 
uals, grow effete, and languid, and bloodless, and ossify by the 
necessities of their ow^n conformation, and the fatal operation of 



60 CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 

longevity and time. These analogies between bodies natural and 
politic, though they may sometimes illustrate arguments, furnish 
no arguments for themselves. Individuals are physical beings, 
subject to laws universal and invariable. But commonwealths are 
not physical, but moral essences. Such arguments are but too 
often used under color of a specious philosophy to find apologies 
for the despair of laziness and pusillanimity, and to excuse the 
w'ant of all manly efforts, when the exigencies of our country call 
for them more loudly." 

PATKIOTISM. 

The life of a nation depends upon the proper kind and quantity 
of nutriment. What is this? Patriotism! And whence comes 
patriotism ? From education and association. See to it, then, 
legislators, for in your hands, absolutely, is the weal or the woe 
of this nation, that the American youth shall receive not only in- 
tellectual and moral, but patriotic training as well. 

It is selfishness, lust for gold, and inordinate ambition ; in other 
words, a want of patriotism, that gives birth to the political crimes 
that, to-day, so disgrace and humiliate us. The times and our 
country demand the highest type of heroic manhood, which is not 
found so much in him who, in battles' van, bares his breast to the 
sanguinary and deadly storms of war, as in him whose strong 
love of right and justice impels him to search out wrong, and, 
wherever and whenever found, and under whatever guise, to have 
the courage to denounce it and to make war upon it. We want 
that bold, lofty, majestic, audacious courage which characterized 
Menippus, Avhen he said to the great high priest of all the gods, 
You are angry, Jupiter; you grasp the thunder, but you are icrong. 

Let the rising generation — the young politicians — the future 
statesmen in particular — be taught that honor and honesty and 
love of country are inseparable. Let them know that a man who 
is so lost to honor and patriotism as to wrong his country, would 
sell it. Let them ever remember that the jewel of their lives, — 
an honorable name, — like the delicate golden- and rainbow-tinted 
powder on the wings of the beauteous butterfly, when once tarn- 
ished, can never again appear in the lustre of its virgin beauty. 
Let them ever remember — let them never for a moment forget 



CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 61 

" That one bad action soils a name for aye, 
However mighty in the olden time; 
Nor all that heralds rake from coffined clay, 
Nor florid prose, nor honeyed lies of rhyme, 
Can blazon evil deeds, or consecrate a crime." 

Our country lias clone great things in a great age. Tried by 
the Scriptural text, — " By their fruits shall ye know them," — we 
may well be proud of our record. Compare the first century of 
our Republic with a century of some of the greatest periods of 
reformation in the history of the world, and see which of all has 
done the most for the happiness of man and for human progress. 

In sacred history, look at the eras of Moses, of Christ, of Mo- 
hammed, and of Luther. All these great periods found man in 
the most miserable and wretched condition of physical and mental 
slavery, and they all left him as they found him, — without the 
slightest improvement in his condition. In secular history, look 
at the age of Pericles, wh^n Greece was raised to the highest 
pinnacle of aesthetic glory ; of Augustus, when martial force at 
Rome was invincible ; of Leo X., the age of scientific invention, 
and of elegant literature: all these found man physically, men- 
tally, and morally in the most pitiably degraded condition, — and 
they all left him in the very same condition. 

It was reserved for the age of Washington^the age of amelio- 
ration, the age of humanity — to better the condition of man, to 
elevate him, to make him conscious of the dignity of human 
nature within him. The United States of America has done 
more, directly and indirectly, in the last one hundred years, for 
the universal amelioration of man's miserable condition, for the 
mitigation of 

"Those twin jailors of the daring heart, 
Low birth and iron fortune," 

for human progress, for civilization, than the combined efforts of 
the past six thousand years had before done. What Macaulay 
claims for the Baconian philosophy may quite as well be claimed 
for our self-government, that, " It hath lengthened life, it has 
mitigated pain, it has extinguished diseases, it has increased the 
fertility of the soil, it has given new securities to the mariner, it 
has furnished new arms to the warrior, it has s|vinned great rivers 



62 CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 

and estuaries Avith bridges of form unknown to our fathers, it has 
guided the thunderbolt innocuously from heaven to earth, it has 
lighted up the night M'ith the splendor of the day, it has extended 
the range of the human vision, it has multiplied the power of the 
human muscle, it has accelerated motion, it has annihilated dis- 
tance, it has facilitated intercourse, correspondence, all friendly 
offices, all dispatch of business, it has enabled man to descend to 
the bottom of the sea, to soar into the air, to penetrate securely 
into the noxious recesses of the earth, to traverse the land on ears 
which wJiirl along without horses, and the ocean in ships, which 
sail against the wind. These are but a part of its fruits, and of 
its first fruits. For it is a philosophy [as ours is a government] 
which never rests, which has never attained, which is never per- 
fect. Its law is progress. A point which yesterday was invisible 
is its goal to-day, and will be its starting-post to-morrow." 

The inventive genius of America will next, through the instan- 
taneous production of a vacuum, drive all machinery by atmospheric 
pressure. Let us felicitate ourselves upon our glorious past, and 
go forth to meet the shadowy future with high hopes for even 
greater achievements — for the abolition of all political wrong — 
for the universal brotherhood of all mankind. 

As a people we have everything to be proud of in the past, 
and everything to live for in the future. Proper education will 
be our safeguard for all time to come. For the present let us 
make war on all tiie social vices and political crimes that curse 
the land. Let us break the vulgar idol, Fashion, that the millions 
high and low, rich and poor, old and young, those in and those 
out of church, bow down to and worship, and let us do homage at 
the shrine of common sense and modesty. Let political corrup- 
tion be banished from out the land ; tie the liands of those who 
may give and tie the hands of those who may receive. Let us 
make ignorant, brazen-faced politicians — as fit to guide the ship of 
state as a blind pilot would be to guide a INIississippi steamboat — 
be ashamed to show their corrupt and worthless presence among 
our honest and ffiant statesmen. 



CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. QS 

WOMAN. 

To do all this, it may become necessary to enlist the service 
of woman, because of her instinctive purity. So much exalted 
virtue and superior intelligence ought to be utilized. 

OUR GREAT COUNTRY. 

Let your minds be awakened to a full appreciation of our great 
country, the greatest and best politically, the most remarkable in 
fertility, climate, and beauty of scenery, the sun of heaven ever, 
shone upon. You know not what a country you possess. It is, 
in the language of Scripture, a (and wherein thou shall eat bread 
without scarceness ; thou sJialt not lack anything in it. This land, 
like the fabled Lotus, causes all who taste of it to forget their own 
country. 

Oh, Christ 1 it is a goodly sight to see 

What heaven hath clone for this delicious land ! 

What fruits of fragrance hiush on every tree I 
What goodly prospects o'er the hills expand ! 

You are heirs to -the mightiest empire man ever consecrated to 
Freedom. To cross this country from ocean to ocean, and study 
its varied and inexhaustible resoyirces ; to behold the beauty and 
sublimity of its natural scenery; to fully realize its vast magni- 
tude ; would be to give you a far keener appreciation of what a 
glorious thing it is, indeed, to be an American citizen. Behold 
our young nation, with its happy and prosperous millions, speeding 
on to greater greatness. See the ten thousand evidences of its 
healthy prosperity. Think of this nation, just now but a century 
old, with 75,000 miles of railroad in good running order — enough 
to thrice girdle the earth; 30,000 to 40,000 miles in course of 
construction. One great national iron highway already spanning 
the continent from ocean to ocean, and two more to be built within 
. the next decade. The locomotive now measures the distance from 
New York to San Francisco in eighty-four hours. Our flibulously 
productive soil, our busy manufactories, a universal commerce; 
our sails to-day swelled by the breezes of every sea; our keels 
plowing the waters of every ocean, and all to be augmented 



'•;^-\ 



64 CENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 

speedily ; our flag, beloved at home and respected abroad, and, 
within the next quarter of a century, to be "the sceptre all 
WHO MEET OBEY." What a grand, inspiring, and glorious pros- 
pect is this to every American citizen ! 

When, a few years hence, a more generous, ennobling, and en- 
lightened spirit of humanity shall have completely annihilated 
a detestable species of selfishness abroad in our land ; when we, 
as American citizens — enjoying all the rights and privileges of 
man — shall be brought to feel and acknowledge that down-trodden 
and oppressed foreigners, from whatever quarter of the globe, 
have as good a right to seek protection and a home on the soil of 
America as our forefathers had, who were themselves but down- 
trodden and oppressed foreigners ; and when America shall be 
not only an asyhim for the oppressed of all other nations, but a 
kind and impartial mother to all her own children; when patriot- 
ism and philanthropy shall join hands; when over the threshold 
of the great temple of American liberty there shall be engraved, 
as the law of the land, plain and eternal as if written with the 
golden point of Orion's sword, on the ebon walls of night, these 
words : Equal and Exact Justice to All, w^ithout re- 
gard TO Religion, Nationality, Color, or Sex ; then, in- 
deed, shall our great country be elevated to the most exalted and 
sublime eminence amoncj the nations of the earth. 



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